Testing an appropriate water treatment for the karst region Gunung Kidul, Southern Java, Indonesia

  • Autor:

    Matthies, K. / Obst, U. (2011)

  • Quelle:

    IWRM 2011 - Management of water in a changing world: Lessons learnt  and innovative perspectives, Dresden, Deutschland, 12.-13. Oktober, 2011

  • Datum: 2011
  • Matthies, K. / Obst, U. (2011): „Testing an appropriate water treatment for the karst region Gunung Kidul, Southern Java, Indonesia“. In: IWRM 2011 - Management of water in a changing world: Lessons learnt  and innovative perspectives, Dresden, Deutschland, 12.-13. Oktober, 2011

Abstract

The district of Gunung Kidul in Southern Java is one of the poorest regions in Indonesia. It is located above a big karst formation with very poor filtration and retention capacity which lead to a vulnerable water quality and acute water shortages in dry season.

The deficient waste water treatment in combination with the poor filtration capacity of the karstic underground results in a high contamination of the groundwater which is used as drinking water. To improve the water quality, we developed a tree-step water treatment concept consisting of a central filtration, a hygienization close to the consumer and a household ceramic filtration.

However, for the hygienization step, four selected technologies needed to be examined: chlorination, UV disinfection, sand filtration and ceramic filtration. To determine the disinfection efficiency of these technologies, we conducted a field study at a contaminated spring in Germany and measured the total coliform and Escherichia coli count with culture techniques.

Results showed that, apart from sand filtration which was performed with too high flow rate, all chosen treatments showed good disinfection capacities. The next step will be the testing of these appropriate technologies under Indonesian conditions.