Case Studies and Validation

The study was carried out according to the following procedure:

1. Turbidity of source surface water was measured by a Hach turbidimeter and was 1.3 NTU.
2. 5,000 L of this source water was in-situ processed by the Innosol-WTF instrument with the flow rate 10L/min (requested by user to simulate the Envirocheck cartridge processing time), and the suspended solids (SS) of the equivalent diameter >0.8 micron and < 3,000 micron were concentrated to 1 L without filters by the Innosol instrumentation preserving the physical, chemical, and biological properties of these SS.
3. The turbidity of the 1L concentrate containing the SS from 5,000L as described above was 17 NTU (measured with the same turbidimeter).
4. The 1L concentrate was taken to the accredited lab for microbiological analysis, and multiple instances of Cryptospiridium and Giardia were found, whereas, in comparison, collecting water samples with 1L bottles directly from the same source water provided highly inconsistent results of presence of the said microorganisms.
5. The study was repeated by collecting suspended solids from 1000L filtered water (prior to disinfection) versus using the Envirocheck cartridge.

Whereas no instances of Cryptospiridium nor Giardia were detected by a lab after 1000 L passed through an Envirocheck cartridge, Innosol method collection of suspended solids allowed detection of 87% and 92% instances of Giadia and Cryptosporidium respectively.

This study shows that the standard techniques used by the lab were not adequate for determination of pathogen presence in heterogeneous source water. Such detection became possible due to replacing traditional filter-based methods of collecting suspended solids with the fundamentally new proprietary Innosol technology. The Innosol can process much larger water volumes than Envirocheck cartriges and can concentrate SS while preserving the biological, chemical, and physical structure of the suspended solids thereby making detection of microorganisms substantially more reliable.

The Innosol instrument was used to quantify the inorganic, organic, and biological SS before and after the coagulation process to determine the efficiencies of the chemical coagulants with respect to inorganic, organic non-biological, and biological SS.

The Innosol instrumentation quantifiably demonstrated that:

• excess chemicals were added taking into consideration only the overall concentration of SS in source water while not taking in account the dynamically changing type of SS (unnecessary “over-kill”).
• further reduction of coagulating chemicals in certain time periods became possible by in-situ determining and using appropriate proportions of the coagulation chemicals taking into consideration the different efficiencies of the chemicals with respect to inorganic, organic, and biological SS contaminants and at different environmental conditions.

This study showed clearly that the continuous savings in the flocculation/coagulation stage of a drinking water treatment process resulting from using the data provided by the Innosol instrumentation would be at least 20% of the cost of chemicals at the best equipped water treatment facilities, and possibly in excess of 30% at the older water treatment facilities.

Fundamentally, it became evident that the Innosol instrumentation provides further and significant optimization to flocculation/coagulation stage believed to be already optimized. This is because the Innosol accurately determines how much coagulation chemical is required and what proportions of the said chemicals are most efficient given specific source water content, taking into account the environmental conditions of source water.

Currently all coagulation processes can benefit from significant savings by optimizing using the Innosol instrumentation because until now no tool existed for in-situ determining the absolute and relative quantities of different types of suspended solids required for flocculation/coagulation. It is important to highlight that using Innosol technology does not necessarily require change of a currently established flocculation/coagulation process in a water treatment facility. Innosol just significantly improves efficiency of thereof. While providing in-situ data collection and analysis, Innosol often requires that a water treatment facility changes the concentration of coagulating chemicals only few times a day which is easy to implement in a water treatment facility without buying expensive automatic mixers. Read more about flocculation and coagulation here

This study was conducted at a reputable Canadian water treatment facility which operates several backwashable filters of 18 mega-liter/day. The manufacturer of these filters quoted that backwashing cycles should be performed every 72 hours.

A few years prior to the study using the Innosol instrumentation, an expensive, comprehensive microbiological study had been performed which lasted several months.

The previous study had determined that after only 58 to 65 hours of operating the filters, penetration of biological microorganisms significantly increased, showing that backwashing is necessary far before reaching 72 hours cycle. However, non-biological SS penetration through the filter medium did not significantly increase during the 72 hours cycle.

It was also found that each backwashable filter required backwashing at a different frequency, even though the filters were of identical construction. Defining the exact backwashing time for every filter is extremely time- and labour-consuming, and varies with source water temperature, turbidity, and other dynamically changing environmental conditions.

Due to public safety reasons, at that time the decision was made to backwash all the filters at substantially lesser time than 72 hours.

For comparison, a similar study was conducted using the Innosol instrumentation to determine the safe filter cycle time. In contrast to the lengthy manual study, however, the Innosol allowed this to be determined during a single filter cycle while set in automatic mode. The following procedure was used to optimize the backwashable filter cycle time using the Innosol instrumentation:

1. Innosol-WTF instrument sampled 43200 L of water exiting the chosen backwashable filter during 72 hours. At a rate of once every 5 minutes, the Innosol instrumentation automatically produced data comprising the individual concentrations (as counts per cc of water) of biological, organic, and inorganic SS in user defined size ranges of 1-2 µm, 2.1-3 µm, 3.1–5 µm, 5.1–7 µm, 7.1–10 µm, 10.1–15 µm, 15.1–20 µm, 20.1–50 µm, 50.1–100 µm, >100 µm.
2. After 62 hours of operating the backwashable filter, the Innosol instrumentation produced an automatic alarm indicating a sharp rise in the concentration of biological SS. The biological SS was in fact a small portion of the total SS, but the Innosol instrumentation clearly showed an increase in the biological SS counts per cc while the total SS counts remained essentially the same. High-end commercially available particle counters are not able to detect this type of change.
3. 1000 L of water sampled approximately 15 min before the alarm and at the time of the alarm were collected. These samples were analyzed using a standard microbiological assessment using the Envirocheck cartridge. The analysis confirmed there had been a 15% increase in the concentration of biological SS while total concentration of SS was virtually the same. This analysis required approximately two weeks to complete, compared to the in-situ results provided by the Innosol instrumentation.
4. This particular filter was found effective during the cycle period not exceeding 62 hours under specific set of environmental conditions of source water. Other filters performed better (in terms of biological SS penetration) for upto 67 hours. The Innosol optimization of backwashing filters results in substantial financial savings for a water treatment facility and, most importantly, prevents and alerts when needed on undesirable spikes of biological SS in the ouput of a backwashable filter, which is substantial added value to water quality and safety.
5. Similarly, the Innosol instrumentation identified the log removal of biological microorganisms of a backwashable filter by processing 1,000L of water on the input and output sides of this filter and producing the counts of biological SS accordingly. We suggest this process as a regular maintenance-inspection procedure for checking the log-removal performance of backwashable filters as a safety-benchmark verification of the standard periodic verification of performance of backwashable filters involving enviro-check cartridges.

This study showed that the Innosol instrumentation greatly expedites and reduces the labour cost in determining the log removal of a backwashable filter using the following procedure:

1. 10¹⁰ microspheres of 1.5 µm and 4.5 µm diameter were deposited to the input side of a backwashable filter.
2. For the purpose of this study the Innosol’s dynamic spectrum analyzer was set to detect and count the concentration of microspheres but not any other SS coming off the output of the filter.
3. The Log-removal of the backwashable filter was accurately determined in less than two hours.