Drinking water treatment for a rural karst region in Indonesia

An interdisciplinary German–Indonesian joint research project on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) focused on the development and exemplary implementation of adapted technologies to improve the water supply situation in a model karst region in southern Java. The project involving 19 sub-projects covers exploration of water resources, water extraction, distribution as well as water quality assurance, and waste water treatment. For the water quality assurance, an appropriate and sustainable drinking water treatment concept was developed and exemplarily implemented. Monitoring results showed that the main quality issue was the contamination with hygienically relevant bacteria. Based on the gained results, a water treatment concept was developed consisting of a central sand filtration prior to the distribution network, a semi-central hygienization where large water volumes are needed to remove bacteria deriving from water distribution and a final point-of-use water treatment. This paper focuses on the development of a central sand filtration plant and some first analysis for the development of a recipe for the local production of ceramic filters for household water treatment. ... mehrThe first results show that arsenic and manganese are leaching from the filters made of local raw material. Though discarding the first, filtrates should be sufficient to reduce arsenic and manganese concentration effectively. Moreover, hydraulic conductivities of filter pots made of 40 % pore-forming agents are presented and discussed.