Treatment of highly turbid water in disaster conditions using coagulation-flocculation process: modeling and optimization

Abstract

Abstract In the present research, the coagulation-flocculation (CF) process was used to eliminate highly turbid water in disaster conditions. To better understand the efficiency of the system, the impact of various numerical factors namely; initial turbidity (10–350 NTU), pH (5–9), coagulant dosage (50–250 mg/L), rapid mixing (120–280 rpm), slow mixing (30–50 rpm), and sedimentation time (10–50 min) were optimized through the central composite design (CCD) under response surface methodology (RSM). Based on analysis of variance (ANOVA), the quadratic model was more suitable for the dataset with R2 = 0.85 for removing turbidity. Moreover, the results of the present study revealed that the highest turbidity removal (99.14%) was observed at pH (9), alum dosage (50 mg/L), initial turbidity (350 NTU), rapid mixing (280 rpm), slow mixing (50 rpm), and sedimentation time (50 min). Furthermore, the residual turbidity at the maximum efficiency of the system was 3 NTU.