Drinking Water Treatment for Karstic Springs Case Study Weiz

A constantly growing and consuming population together with climate change is leading to scarcity of resources in many fields. Drinking water was, is and will be the most worth protecting and at the same time the most sensitive resource on our planet. The use of groundwater presents the best way for drinking water supply. However, clean water is getting less and polluted water has to be purified and developed. Especially karstic areas have a high potential for further development. The quality of karstic water can equal groundwaters quality. Occasionally karstic water reacts on rainfalls and snowmelts in different ways, thus it gets affected and needs a water treatment. Initially this thesis describes all current drinking water treatments. Furthermore it has a focus on the karstic water problem; therefore the water supply of Weiz is specified. The drinking water for Weiz and periphery comes from a vulnerable karstic area which is highly influenced by precipitation. The main karstic spring has to be purified constantly. An ozone treatment with a downstream sand filter, which has been operating since the 1970s is still the current practice. The ozone treatment constitutes an energy-intensive process and should be modernized. Within the design period a field test of an automatic backwashing filter system could be conducted. This thesis summarizes the experiences of the field experiment and evaluates the received data.