Abstract |
The lowering of the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for arsenic in drinking water from 50 to 10 ig/L has posed significant technical and financial challenges to water treatment facilities throughout the nation. To assist small water systems (<10,000 customers) in meeting the new standard, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced in October 2001 an initiative, i.e., the Arsenic Rule Implementation Research Program, to conduct, among others, a series of full-scale, on-site demonstrations of arsenic removal technologies, process modifications, and engineering approaches applicable to small systems. Of the 40 project sites under the Round 1 and Round 2 demonstration program, 23 selected adsorptive media technology because of its ease of operation. The conventional way of selecting adsorptive media has been based on the results of long-term pilot-plant studies. To reduce time required and save cost, it was desirable to develop new or utilize existing rapid, small-scale methods to evaluate media performance. Preliminary studies have been recently conducted using a rapid small-scale column test (RSSCT) method that was originally developed for evaluating the performance of granular activated carbon. |