Assessment of Crushed Glass as a Medium for Rapid Rate Filtration

Abstract

This study was carried out to assess the potential of crushed glass as a filter medium in high rate filtration. Waste glass collected from a glass manufacturing industry was crushed using hammer mill and sorted into different particle sizes (0.300 mm, 0.425 mm, 0.550 mm, 1.18 mm and 2.36 mm). The gravel layer was between 2.36 mm to 4.75 mm. The glass were arranged in layers and used as the filter bed for the water filtration process. The depth of each medium was set at 800 mm with a constant flow rate of 0.0275 l/s, and the experimental run of 4 hours. The flow rate, turbidity and head at the ports were monitored at every 30 minutes interval. Glass shows a tremendous decrease in filtration rate with time compared to sand and also a higher headloss developed. At 2.5 hours, glass had attained a turbidity of 0 NTU while sand at 3.5 hours. The results show an increase in filtration efficiency in glass compared to sand which suggests that crushed glass could be used conveniently as a medium for rate of filtration.