Water is an important entity in our life.
Still most of you may not aware that Civil engineers play a significant role when it comes to providing the potable water to your tap.
Water treatment is a highly developed area where so many civil engineers have contributed to the development of the subject.
Recently I had an opportunity to visit a Water Treatment Plant in Australia.
Inorder to provide you a general idead about the water purification process, I will go through a small description with a relevant photo.
Non technical readers , please skip what i have written under brakets
Pump House, the place where water is pumped from the river.
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Water is pumped, 34m below from the tratment plant level. Can you guess why plant has been bult on a such a higer level....?
Then chemicals are been mixed to the raw water ( Alum and NaOH). it happens in the following chamber (its called Rapid Mixer: can any one remember 'hydrulic jump' we lerned at UOM?? that is the theory based here))
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Chemical mixed water been allowed to flow through the 'flocculation tank' ( I'm sorry to use a technical term..but in this tank chemical particles get adhear to the tiny particals in the raw water and form a much bigger particles..which will easilly get settled than tiny particles)
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particales in the water allow to settle in the larger tanks (Sedimentation tank)
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Then water is been flitrated using filtration tanks.
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(abouve picutre is a back wash of the flteration)
Filtered water collected through the pumpms and send them to the purified water well, to be distributed to the consumers.
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These are the stroage tanks which store the varoius chemicals for the tratment processes.
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Particles taht have been removed from the water (Sludge: after thickning)
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So many efforts, time and money have been spent to provide you a good drinkable water to your tap. So it is your duty to optimise your water usage...
"Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it......"
