Chemometric analysis of the water purification process data

The aim of this work was to show usefulness of chemometric analysis in processing of the data describing production of drinking water in the Silesian region of Poland. Water samples have been collected within the period of 1 year and the quality of water was characterized by a number of physical, chemical and microbiological parameters. Principal component analysis (PCA) and STATIS (Structuration des Tableaux A Trois Indices de la Statistique) were employed to obtain the knowledge about the complete water treatment process. PCA makes it possible to uncover seasonal changes influencing the water treatment process. In particular, it was found out that the salt content, hardness and conductivity of water tend to obtain higher levels in winter rather than in summer, and the relatively lower acidity is also to be expected in winter. The sensory quality of water is considerably improved over the consecutive purification steps. Complementary information about the individual technological units of the process is gained with the STATIS approach. The obtained results show that the water produced by the two independent filtering branches of the water plant is of similar quality and the prescribed quality characteristics of drinking water are fulfilled.