POTENTIAL USE OF OZONATION WITH LIMESTONE ADSORPTION IN GROUND TREATMENT: A CASE STUDY AT KELANTAN WATER TREATMENT PLANT

Abstract

Pollution of groundwater occurs due to rapid industrialization and agricultural activities. A desktop study was carried out to identify the actual groundwater problem occurs in Malaysia. The quality of groundwater was investigated to obtain the baseline groundwater data for an alternative integrated water treatment process that involved combination of ozonation and adsorption process. Preliminary data on groundwater pollution were collected from nine Mineral and Geoscience Department(JMG) groundwater monitoring wells, Air Kelantan Sdn Bhd (AKSB) water treatment plant and Natioal Hydraulics Research Institute of Malaysia (NAHRIM). The result shows that raw groundwater in Kelantan contains high concentration of Fe and thus an alternative treatment is necessary. However, based on the previous treated effluent data at one of the water treatment plants in Malaysia has indicated that the use of ozone alone may only  remove Fe concentration up to 0.5- 0.8 mg/L. This exceeded the acceptable limit of 0.3 mg/L .1 Application of ozonation process for groundwater treatment has received more attention based on its capability to transform contaminants into non-harmful substance within a short period. Most previous literature found that limestone is very effective in removing more than 90% of heavy metal such as Cu, Zn, Cd, Ni, Cr, Fe and Mn in water. To improve the performance of ozonation process, an integrated treatment of ozonation and adsorption processes using limestone is proposed in the current study for groundwater treatment.