Abstract—Natural Organic Matter (NOM) is found in all
surface waters. An increase in the amount of NOM over the past
10-20 years has been observed in raw water supply in many
areas in Egypt, which has had a significant impact on drinking
water treatment. Water scarcity and the increased
contamination of drinking water has led to increased doses of
coagulants and disinfectants used in water treatment, which has
led to increased sludge volume and the production of harmful
residual byproducts. In this paper, the results of experiments
using an experimental model carried out to investigate
improving the removal efficacy of NOM using a natural
coagulant, such as chitosan, along with alum, are presented.
The results show the use of chitosan is effective in removing
NOM and reducing algae and turbidity. In addition, a dose of
chitosan added to alum successfully reduced the amount of
alum needed in the purification process.
Index Terms—Alum, chitosan, coagulation, flocculation,
NOM, water purification.
Rania S. M. A. Hamdon is with Civil Engineering Department, Giza
Engineering Institute, El-moneb, Giza, Egypt (e-mail:
civ.rania1990@gmail.com).
Ahmed Salem and Hany G. I. Ahmed are with Civil Engineering
Department, Faculty of Engineering, Al-Azhar University. Cairo, Egypt
(e-mail: ahmedsalemy@azhar.edu.eg, ahmedsalemy@yahoo.com,
hanyahmed@azhar.edu.eg).
Medhat El-Zahar is with Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of
Engineering, Port Said University, 42523, Port Said, Egypt (e-mail:
medhat.alzahar@eng.psu.edu.eg, melzahar@yahoo.com).
Cite: Rania S. M. A. Hamdon, Ahmed Salem, Hany G. I. Ahmed, Medhat M. H. ElZahar, "Use of Chitosan for Enhancing the Process of Surface Water Purification in Egypt," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 26-34, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).