In the United Kingdom, most of the resources used by the Northumbrian Water group to produce drinkingwater are surface waters characterized by high natural organic matter (NOM) concentrationsas 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 Waterdrinking water suppliers have to implement efficient processes on their treatment works tocomply with the current EU regulation on THM and on pesticides (100 g/L and 0.1 g/Lrespectively). Among the different solutions tested to improve the existing WTW, adsorptionon granular activated carbon (GAC) filters was tested within this study to solve both NOMand pesticides issues. The objective of this paper was to present the results obtained by thisstudy by two different approaches to simulate the full scale GAC breakthrough curves forNOM and isoproturon: the Rapid Small Scale Column Test (RSSCT); and, the HomogeneousSurface Diffusion Model (HSDM). The main interest of RSSCT method was its ability topredict 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 GACbreakthrough curves for different initial NOM and isoproturon concentrations or differentGAC 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.
Keywords: Pesticides; Modeling; Adsorption; Natural Organic Matter; Trihalomethanes; United Kingdom; Granular Activated Carbon
