Waste water process assessment and waterborne pathogens removal using bentonite filtration as an eco-friendly technique in Tlemcen city, Algeria

Abstract

Abstract: Like cities in other arid and semi-arid African countries, Tlemcen is facing population growth problems, water stress, and pollution.

This study summarises the findings from assessing a plant’s role and technology in meeting the public health criteria through the waterborne pathogens identification and enumeration, a complete bacteriological analyses were performed and the count of bacteria has been compared between the three studied processes.

Furthermore, this study is dedicated to the study of the bentonite clay technique, which consists of the targeted pollutants removal at limited cost and a better understanding and control of waste water quality.

The results of the assessment revealed that activated sludge (ASP) treatment plant recorded the highest coliform concentrations with an average of 785.67 MPN/100 ml vs. 1.28 MPN/100 ml for sequential batch reactor (SBR) and 0 MPN/100 ml for membrane bioreactor (MBR) treated water.

The study disclosed the MBR technology as the most efficient in the pathogenic micro-organisms removal, however, the well-known high cost of this technology compared to other processes allowed us to experiment the efficiency of the bentonite clay to get rid of all the pathogens.

Thus, the results of influent and effluent bacterial studies, using bentonite filtering showed a total removal of all counted densities of microorganisms. The latter included total viable counts, total coliform, faecal coliform, faecal Streptococci, Salmonellae, Shigella, Vibrio, Staphylococci, and Listeria.