A framework is presented to assist intelligent decision making at watertreatment plants practicing normal and enhanced coagulation processes, and a simplespreadsheet program was developed to illustrate its use. The program is currentlydesigned to identify the lowest cost treatment approach for a given water while meetingregulatory constraints. Initial use of the tool has led us to question the notion thatenhancement of coagulation by sulfuric acid addition frequently reduces overall treatmentcosts. The main weaknesses are limited testing of the approach at full scale, a need toenter some cost information that might not be readily available at some utilities, and arelatively low accuracy for some predictive equations. It is anticipated that all of theselimitations will be overcome with additional work, and that the framework presentedherein will eventually provide the water industry with a useful tool.
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