Journal of

Background: The most important process in water treatment plant is coagulation and flocculation. Regular chemical coagulant which used in Iran are aluminum sulfate (Alum) and ferric chloride. Chemical coagulants have hazardous effect on human health and their cost is high for developing country. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the comparison of chemical coagulants accompany with corn starch as a coagulant aid, for the turbidity removal from water.

Methods: This study was accomplished in pilot-scale with synthetic turbid water using clay. In this research, initial turbidity of 250 and 500 NTU was experimented. Chemical coagulant dose during the experiment was 1, 2 and 5 ppm and natural coagulant dose was 0, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7 ppm.

Results: The results showed that maximum removal efficiency of turbidity in initial turbidity of 250 NTU belonged to poly aluminum chloride with 5 ppm dosage and corn starch with 0.7 ppm dosage which removed and reduced the initial turbidity to 98.48% and 3.73 NTU, respectively. Moreover, in initial turbidity of 500 NTU the maximum removal efficiency was 98.52% which belonged to ferric chloride and corn starch (5 and 0.7 ppm respectively) and reduced the initial turbidity to 7.4 NTU.

Conclusions: The results of this study showed that using natural coagulant aid reduce the chemical coagulant consumption, and also does not have significant effect on pH range and reduce the health risks. While huge amount of required polyelectrolytes for water treatment plant imported to the country and the production of corn starch in our country is high, it is hope that the results of this project can be used in industrial scale.