Small-scale Study On Algae Removal By UV Technology

The occurrence of algae blooms and possibility of production of algal toxins have become major concerns for drinking water providers worldwide. A lot of running water plants which come resource from lake water spend a large amount of cost on algae removal. However, most of current processes to remove algae have deferent defects respectively, thus, how to seek a new clean, safe and lower cost process to remove algae from raw water is pretty meaningful at present. As an absolutely new technology, the related reports about removing algae by UV technology have not been seen in domestic and overseas journals. The results show that the effect of the removal algae by UV technology is certain. Under conditions of radiation dose of 1026mj/cm², turbidity of 7.34 and PH value of 7.15, the removing algae efficiencies can be equivalent to the efficiencies under conditions of dose of 5mg/L Cl₂, which is a current widely used process to remove algae. The rate of removing algae is related to the factors such as radiation dose, turbidity and water temperature. Generally, the rate of removing algae increases with radiation dose and water temperature, decreases with turbidity. Under conditions of mentioned above, the horizontal service radius of UV light is 15cm. the direct cost to treat Eastlake water is 0.039 yuan. This experiment mainly focused on studying the algae removing principle by ultraviolet(UV) light technology. We found the algae removing principle and discovered the optimize critical point to remove algae. In additional, we compared the cost of ultraviolet technology with other current process such as utilizing Cl₂, ClO₂, KMnO₄, H₂O₂ etc, the results showed that the UV technology is a clean, safe, easy to operate, and economical technology. This technology is worth being carried out widely and has bright future.