Evaluation of Ceramic Filtration for Drinking Water Treatment in Small Systems

There are approximately 50,000 small community systems and 140,000 non-community systems serving over 25 million transient and non-transient populations of 3,300 people or less. Several of these small systems are having difficulty complying with the ever increasing number of regulations and regulated contaminants and it is estimated that small systems contribute 74% of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and its Amendments (SDWAA) violations annually. Nearly 90% of these are for Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) violations. EPA conducts in-house technology development and evaluation to support the small communities. As part of this research effort, EPA has been evaluating a ceramic filtration system for the production of drinking water. The system is being challenged with various turbidity levels, Cryptosporidium (using polystyrene latex beads as a surrogate) and Bacillus Subtilis (to evaluate bacteria removal). This paper presents the results of studies conducted to date on this system. Future research efforts will include testing the system for removal of total coliforms, MS2 bacteriophage and Cryptosporidium parvum.