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The filtration of public water-supplies / Third edition, revised and enlarged. cover

The filtration of public water-supplies / Third edition, revised and enlarged.

Chapter 25: THE LOSS OF HEAD.
By Allen Hazen
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About This Book

This book presents a practical, engineering-focused treatment of water filtration for municipal supplies, combining historical perspective, design principles, and operational guidance. It explains types of filters, construction of beds and underdrains, selection and grading of sands and gravels, rates of filtration, head loss, and mechanisms for regulating flow. Procedures for cleaning, sand-washing, and intermittent operation are described alongside theoretical and bacteriological considerations that bear on efficiency. Methods for measuring and removing turbidity and color, the effects of suspended mud, coagulation practices, and numerous design examples and appendices illustrate how to plan, build, and maintain effective filtration works.

THE LOSS OF HEAD.

The loss of head is the difference between the heads of the waters above and below the sand layer, and represents the frictional resistance of that layer. When a filter is quite free from clogging this frictional resistance is small, but gradually increases with the deposit of a sediment layer from the water filtered until it becomes so great that the clogging must be removed by scraping before the process can be continued. After scraping the loss of head is reduced to, or nearly to, its original amount. With any given amount of clogging the loss of head is directly proportional to the rate of filtration; that is, if a filter partially clogged, filtering at a rate of 1.0, has a frictional resistance of 0.5 ft., the resistance will be doubled by increasing the rate to 2.00 million gallons per acre daily, provided no disturbance of the sediment layer is allowed. This law for the frictional resistance of water in sand alone also applies to the sediment layer, as I have found by repeated tests, although in so violent a change as that mentioned above, the utmost care is required to make the change gradually and prevent compression or breaking of the sediment layer. From this relation between the rate of filtration and the loss of head it is seen that the regulation of either involves the regulation of the other, and it is a matter of indifference which is directly and which indirectly controlled.