Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : Riverbed filtration is a promising alternative method of drinking water production for developing countries which has been little investigated and therefore is still poorly characterized. As it offers some advantages on riverbank filtration in terms of production yield and quality of treated water, riverbed filtration needs to be better understood and more deeply defined. The objectives of this work are to characterize the physicochemical phenomena involved in riverbed filtration systems and to develop a general method allowing the prediction of their production yield. To achieve these objectives, a riverbed filtration installation set up in Camiri, in southeastern Bolivia, was characterized by collecting field data about the production yield of its riverbed filtration systems and the quality of their produced water. The results concerning the water quality show that riverbed filtration provides a noteworthy efficiency in the removal of turbidity and coliform microorganisms, allowing the only need of subsequent chlorine disinfection. Regarding the production yield of the riverbed filtration systems, the results obtained from the field study are successfully compared to those predicted by a method developed in this work, based on the evaluation, in laboratory, of the characteristic permeabilities of the porous media in the studied systems. This comparison highlights the fact that a clogging of a part of the riverbed might be the reason of the observed significant drop over time of the production yield of a riverbed filtration system.

Documents en relation

DI-fusion