The performance of pumice as a filter bed material under rapid filtration conditions

Deep bed sand filters are used extensively in drinking water and wastewater treatment. In this study, sand and pumice were used as a filtration media under rapid filtration conditions and performance results for both were compared. Turbidity removal performance and head losses were investigated as functions of filtration rate, bed depth and particle size. Under the same experimental conditions such as 750 mm bed depth, 7.64m³/m².h flow rate and, 0.5−1.0 mm grain size, turbidity removal rates for sand and pumice were found to be 85-90% and 98-99%, respectively. Furthermore, the head loss for sand and pumice were found to be 460 mm and 215 mm, respectively. The results obtained have shown that pumice has a high potential for use as a filter bed material.