In the United Kingdom, most of the resources used by the Northumbrian Water group to produce drinking
water are surface waters characterized by high natural organic matter (NOM) concentrations
as well as by pesticide occurrence when located in agricultural areas. Consequently, the Trihalomethane
(THM) formation risk has to be considered as well. In this context, Northumbrian Water
drinking water suppliers have to implement efficient processes on their treatment works to
comply with the current EU regulation on THM and on pesticides (100 µg/L and 0.1 µg/L
respectively). Among the different solutions tested to improve the existing WTW, adsorption
on granular activated carbon (GAC) filters was tested within this study to solve both NOM
and pesticides issues. The objective of this paper was to present the results obtained by this
study by two different approaches to simulate the full scale GAC breakthrough curves for
NOM and isoproturon: the Rapid Small Scale Column Test (RSSCT); and, the Homogeneous
Surface Diffusion Model (HSDM). The main interest of RSSCT method was its ability to
predict a one year breakthrough curve in one to two months test under dynamic conditions.
The main interest of HSDM method is the ability to easily and quickly simulate GAC
breakthrough curves for different initial NOM and isoproturon concentrations or different
GAC filter characteristics based on the same isotherms and kinetics bench scale experiments.
The comparison between the results obtained by the two methods shows good correlation. Includes 6 references, tables, figures.