In the 21 century drinking water of acceptable quality should be available to every person. Numerous investigations are on-going worldwide around the world, to develop innovative and cost attractive approaches for production of high quality drinking water. To allow application of new treatment technology in practice, pilot testing under field conditions are required. Groundwater used for drinking water productions in the Subotica municipalities (Serbia) contains elevated concentrations of arsenic, iron and ammonia, and therefore provided a good basis for continuation of research of UNESCO-IHE, the Netherlands Institute for Water Education, that has been developing innovative water treatment technologies specifically in the field of groundwater treatment and specifically arsenic removal. Objective of this project presented in this paper were to test under field conditions IHE ADART, the innovative adsorptive arsenic removal technology. The pilot project has demonstrated that in addition to conventional approach based on coagulation and break-point chlorination, there is and alternative treatment approach based on biological ammonia removal and adsorptive removal of arsenic that could be economically and ecologically attractive.

A batch adsorption test was conducted to examine the adsorption characteristics of cadmium and copper on bed sediments of the Sava river and its relation to the concentration of dissolved metals. The adsorption of ions were studied using equilibrium technique as a function of adsorbate concentration. The adsorption data, over the whole range of concentrations used, follow the Langmuir adsorption isotherm. Cu2+ and Cd2+ adsorption isotherms were measured on some sediment samples obtained from 3 different sites.

Coagulation and flocculation can be efficiency applied in drinkling water treatment, in order to remove natural organic matter (NOM). However, in the experiments presented in this paper, the water used is very rich in NOM, and required investigations of additional processes. In order to increase the efficiency of coagulation and flocculation processes in removing NOM from groundwater, the following processes were investigated: adsorption on powdered activated carbon (5-30 mg PAC/l) and preozonation with applied ozone doses of 1.1-6.3 mg O3/l. The parameters used to evaluated the changes in NOM content during the experiment were: KMnO4 consumption, UV absorbance at 254 nm, pH and turbidity.