Waste Water Process Assessment And Waterborne Pathogens ‎removal Using Bentonite Filtration As An Eco-friendly ‎technique In Tlemcen City, Algeria

Like cities in other arid and semi-arid African countries, Tlemcen ‎is facing population growth problems, water stress, and ‎pollution.‎ This study summarises the findings from assessing a plant’s role ‎and technology in meeting the public health criteria through the ‎waterborne pathogens identification and enumeration, a ‎complete bacteriological analyses were performed and the count ‎of bacteria has been compared between the three studied ‎processes. ‎ Furthermore, this study is dedicated to the study of the bentonite ‎clay technique, which consists of the targeted pollutants removal ‎at limited cost and a better understanding and control of waste ‎water quality.‎ The results of the assessment revealed that activated sludge ‎‎(ASP) treatment plant recorded the highest coliform ‎concentrations with an average of 785.67 MPN/100 ml vs. ‎‎1.28 MPN/100 ml for sequential batch reactor (SBR) and ‎‎0 MPN/100 ml for membrane bioreactor (MBR) treated water.‎ The study disclosed the MBR technology as the most efficient in ‎the pathogenic micro-organisms removal, however, the well-‎known high cost of this technology compared to other processes ‎allowed us to experiment the efficiency of the bentonite clay to ‎get rid of all the pathogens. ‎ Thus, the results of influent and effluent bacterial studies, using ‎bentonite filtering showed a total removal of all counted densities ‎of microorganisms. The latter included total viable counts, total ‎coliform, faecal coliform, faecal Streptococci, Salmonellae, ‎Shigella, Vibrio, Staphylococci, and Listeria.‎