%0 Journal Article
%T Modelling of Water Quality: An Application to a Water Treatment Process
%A Petri Juntunen
%A Mika Liukkonen
%A Marja Pelo
%A Markku J. Lehtola
%A Yrj£¿ Hiltunen
%J Applied Computational Intelligence and Soft Computing
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/846321
%X The modelling of water treatment processes is challenging because of its complexity, nonlinearity, and numerous contributory variables, but it is of particular importance since water of low quality causes health-related and economic problems which have a considerable impact on people¡¯s daily lives. Linear and nonlinear modelling methods are used here to model residual aluminium and turbidity in treated water, using both laboratory and process data as input variables. The approach includes variable selection to find the most important factors affecting the quality parameters. Correlations of 0.7¨C0.9 between the modelled and real values for the target parameters were ultimately achieved. This data analysis procedure seems to provide an efficient means of modelling the water treatment process and defining its most essential variables. 1. Introduction Water quality is becoming an ever more important issue, as water of low quality causes many significant problems. In particular, there is a wide range of microbial and chemical constituents of drinking water that can cause either acute or chronic detrimental health effects, and the detection of these constituents in treated water is often time-consuming, complex, and expensive [1]. On the other hand, water of bad quality can also be harmful from an economic perspective, as resources have to be directed towards improving the water supply system every time a problem occurs. For these reasons, there is growing pressure to improve water treatment and water quality management in order to ensure safe drinking water at reasonable costs. Systematic assessments of raw water, treatment processes, and operational monitoring issues are needed to meet these challenges. There are many parameters which can be used to measure the quality of water, of which turbidity is a common one, the purpose being to measure impurities in the water. In a physical sense, turbidity is a reduction in the clarity of water due to the presence of suspended or colloidal particles, and it is commonly used as an indicator of the general condition of drinking water [1]. Furthermore, turbidity has been used for many decades as an indicator of the efficiency of drinking water coagulation and filtration processes, so that it is an important operational parameter for this reason, too. High turbidity values refer to poor disinfection and possibly to fouling problems in the distribution network, so that turbidity should be minimized [2]. However, turbidity is a quite sensible and faulty measurement, and many variables and phenomena are influencing it.
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/acisc/2012/846321/