Modelling turbidity removal by poly-aluminium chloride coagulant using gene expression

Coagulants are used in drinking water treatment plants to increase the size of particles and to help make them bigger and more able to settle at the later stages of the process. Poly-aluminium Chloride (PACL) was used in this study to evaluate its coagulation effectivity in different conditions. Three sets of experiments were done to determine the relationship between some raw water characteristics, including raw turbidity level, pH, and the temperature with optimum doses of PACL, in order to form a mathematical equation that could predict the removal effectivity. The experiments were performed under different seasonal circumstances. Four levels of turbidity were studied, 10, 50, 100, 150 NTU, with six different PACL doses from 5 to 35 mg/L. The results were used to build up a gene expression model (GEP). The GEP model gave very good results with a correlation coefficient equals to (0.91), and a root mean square error of 0.046.