EPM Water Treatment Plants

Located on land between Bello and Copacabana, it has a first-phase treatment capacity of six cubic meters per second; in its second phase, this will increase to nine cubic meters per second.

Processes involved in the production of drinking water at the Manantiales plant are:

• Chemical oxidization: hydrogen peroxide is added to eliminate organic compounds that are the precursors of trihalomethanes.  
• Absorption: activated carbon is added to eliminate compounds that give odor, taste and color to the water. 
• Coagulation: aluminum sulfate is added to destabilize the colloidal particles and allow them to agglomerate at a later stage. 
• Flocculation: through the movement of the water mass, destabilized particles are agglomerated to form floc. 
• Sedimentation: solids are separated from the water through gravity action. Particles that are less dense or that are too small to be separated by the action of their own weight are removed in the next stage. 
• Filtration: the water passes through a filter bed, which retains micro-floc. 
• Disinfection: the last stage of the process is the addition of chlorine to eliminate microorganisms and effectively give it the characteristics of drinking water.

This drinking water treatment plant supplies the greater part of drinking water to the interconnected pipeline system. Its installed capacity is 9.20 cubic meters per second. It takes water from the Buey, Piedras and Pantanillo rivers and the Las Palmas and Porteros rivulets that are tributaries from the La Fe dam, and its useful capacity is 12.1 million cubic meters.

Process type: Drinking water treatment plant

Water processed at the plant comes from the Piedras Blancas Dam, and from here, passes to Toldo, where it generates energy, and finally arrives at the plant.

Conventional plant: this is a plant where each of the processes occurs in different structures, i.e., made up of channels, flocculators, sedimentation beds and filters. Residence times are very high.< /p>

Compact plant: this is where the processes of coagulation, flocculation and sedimentation occur in a same unit, before passing to the filters. Its residence times are low.