Climate change caused new constraints on fast sand filters

When algal blooms put the sand filters under pressure, Thames Water started its own in-house research into new filter materials. Not only did the effort cure the constraint, the use of new filter materials has saved millions in investments.

Filtralite® Pure, world best filter material for purification of drinking water

To purify water with sand takes a long time. Moreover it requires lot of maintenance and major resources in connection with cleaning. More than a dozen different materials, including sand, broken glass, sand / anthracite and Filtralite Pure Mono-Multi were tested by Thames Water in a major research program.

Finally the choice fell on Filtralite Pure Mono-Multi.

Water, energy and time saving

With Filtralite Pure Mono-Multi, the ability to catch particles of different sizes in the filter bed is of high relevance, and this gives less head loss and longer filtering cycles, i.e. a reduced need of backwashing. “If we take all considerations into the picture, two layers of Filtralite filters are highly effective, so we have also studied different fractions of these. It seems clear that the Filtralite Pure Mono-Multi possess an extra filtering dimension, which may be explained by its open structure. This is the reason why we have already renovated 37 rapid sand filters with Filtralite Pure Mono Multi”, states Dr. Chipps.

The discovery of Filtralite Pure Mono-Multi has already saved Thames Water great investments, as older fast filters can be renovated and given increased capacity without increasing the footprint.