Evaluating residual aluminum in purification plants using gene expression

الملخص

Coagulation is one of the most important processes in the drinking water purification, this process is used to increase the size of the suspensions and collect them together in flocs that can be settled in the later stages of treatment. For this purpose various coagulants are used, these coagulants give soluble products that are capable of being combined into huge flocs.Aluminum sulfate) ( commercially known as alum, is one of the most common coagulants. The high dose of it causes an increase of aluminum residual in the treated water, and the presence of high concentrations of aluminum in the water is associated with many health problems, some studies indicate it can increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Thus it is very important to reduce the amount of aluminum remaining in drinking water. This study focused on the relationship of residual aluminum with the various parameters, the actual data of the water purification plant in Al-Qusayr in Homs city was used over a period of three years, the parameters used as inputs were: turbidity, temperature, conductivity, alum dose and pH, and residual aluminum as an output. This was done using the genetic expression technology (GEP) to find an equation that determines the value of aluminum remaining in drinking water. After analyzing the data and eliminating outliers, the data was used to build several models, the fitness for each model was evaluated, and the model with the highest fitness was select. A multiple linear regression (MLR) model was also built. The results showed that the nonlinear equation obtained by GEP is superior to the model obtained from MLR. And it gave results with a high accuracy with a correlation coefficient (R) equals to (0.9) and an absolute error value equals to (AE) 0.024