Chemical Treatment to Reduce Turbidity in Pumped Construction Site Water

Authors

Jihoon Kang, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Joshua W. Vetter
Richard A. McLaughlin

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2018

Abstract

Many construction projects need to pump turbid water from borrow pits or other excavations into stilling basins or sediment filter bags prior to discharge. This study evaluated the effectiveness of these devices with polyacrylamide (PAM) injection to reduce effluent turbidity. Results from laboratory jar tests using two coastal plain sediments of North Carolina suggested that a cationic PAM was the most effective in reducing turbidity, followed by a nonionic PAM. Anionic PAM was effective in whole-soil jar tests but not when turbid supernatant was tested. A stilling basin was not effective in reducing the turbidity of the pumped water without PAM. Cationic and nonionic PAMs injected to the pumped turbid water reduced effluent turbidity from the basin by 98% and 90%, respectively. Pumping the turbid water through a sediment filter bag was also not effective for turbidity reduction unless PAM was injected into the pumping system. Our results suggested that the relatively nontoxic, nonionic PAM may be an alternative where anionic PAM is not effective in reducing turbidity in borrow pit operations.

Comments

© ASCE.

This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Recommended Citation

Kang, Jihoon, Joshua W. Vetter, and Richard A. McLaughlin. "Chemical treatment to reduce turbidity in pumped construction site water." Journal of Environmental Engineering 144, no. 12 (2018): 04018120. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)EE.1943-7870.0001498

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Publication Title

Journal of Environmental Engineering

DOI

10.1061/(ASCE)EE.1943-7870.0001498