TECHNICAL NOTE: SEWAGE TREATMENT IN AN ORGANIC FILTER FOLLOWED BY COAGULATION WITH MORINGA SEED EXTRACT - DOI: 10.13083/1414-3984.v22n03a07

Abstract

Several studies showed effective turbidity removal from water when using moringa seed extract (Moringa oleifera) as a coagulating agent. In the treatment of sewage, a major inconvenience of using this natural coagulant is the application of large quantities of the seed. One alternative for reducing the amount of seeds needed to prepare the coagulant extract is primary treatment of sewage in organic filters, thus removing the coarser fractions of the contained solids. In order to evaluate the possible reduction in seed demand for wastewater treatment, it was passed through an organic filter packed with sawdust. In samples of the filter effluent, aliquots of different seed extracts were added to obtain the concentrations of 0-3.2 g of powdered seeds per liter of effluent from the filter. In contrast to the formulated hypothesis, increase in concentration of the coagulant increased the turbidity of the effluent from the filter. In some ways, soluble constituents of the filter material were able to inactivate the protein coagulant of the crushed seeds.