IPB University Professor: Biofiltration as The Solution to Reduce Organic Pollutants in Water
Waste from human activities, such as industry, agriculture, and forestry may cause water pollution in rivers and disturbing the balance of aquatic ecosystem if the water from those rivers are used as clean water source. This condition caused higher processing cost and risk of diseases.
Prof. Dr. Ir. Suprihatin, professor of Department of Agroindustrial Technology (TIN), Faculty of Agriculture Technology (Fateta), IPB University (IPB) uses biofiltration process to eliminate pollutants from raw water. “Before processed, the river water is treated. Biofiltration provides optimal condition so that the bacteria can grow well. Then, the bacteria can eliminate pollutants, especially organic pollutants. Biofiltration is often implemented to reduce pollutants in the air, but this research is focused on river water,” she said.
According to her, raw water processing differs between Indonesia and other countries. In other countries, the pollutants are usually low and are hardly degraded, while in Indonesia the pollutants are generally high and some of them are hard to degrade. There are various methods of water processing which are studied in other countries, such as adsorption method. For some cases, such method is more effective than biofiltration, if the quantity of the pollutants is lesser and hard to degrade biologically. This study about biofiltration can develop and be done by three years and involved some students from TIN IPB University .
“Biofiltration process doesn’t really need sophisticated equipment and expensive chemical agents. There is no significant obstacle, compared to other much more expensive methods. Biofiltration also reduces the processing cost or increasing the capacity of water processing installation, of which water comes from the river,” she said.
Biofiltration is expected to solve the problems and to be able to be implemented in commercial level. “Biofiltration can also help us achieve better, healthier, and safer raw water to consume,” explained Prof. Suprihatin. (Ard)
