EFFECT OF RATE UPON COST OF FILTRATION.
The size of the filters required, and consequently the first cost, depends upon the rate of filtration, but with increasing rates the cost is not reduced in the same proportion as the increase in rate, since the allowance for area out of use is sensibly the same for high and low rates, and in addition the operating expenses depend upon the quantity filtered and not upon the filtering area. Thus, to supply 10 million gallons at a maximum rate of 2 million gallons per acre daily we should require 10 ÷ 2 = 5 acres + 1 acre reserve for cleaning = 6 acres, while with a rate twice as great, and with the same reserve (since the same amount of cleaning must be done, as will be shown below), we should require 10 ÷ 4 + 1 = 3.5 acres, or 58 per cent of the area required for the lower rate. Thus beyond a certain point increasing the rate does not effect a corresponding reduction in the first cost.
The operating cost for the same quantity of water filtered does not appear to be appreciably affected by the rate. It is obvious that at high rates filters will became clogged more rapidly, and will so require to be scraped oftener than at low rates, and it might naturally be supposed that the clogging would increase more rapidly than the rates, but this does not seem to be the case. At the Lawrence Experiment Station, under strictly parallel conditions and with identically the same water, filters running at various rates became clogged with a rapidity directly proportional to the rates, so that the quantities of water filtered between scrapings under any given conditions are the same whether the rate is high or low.
The statistics bearing upon this point are interesting, if not entirely conclusive. There were eleven places in Germany filtering river waters, from which statistics were available for the year 1891-92. Of these there were four places with high rates, Lübeck, Stettin, Stuttgart, and Magdeburg, yielding 3.70 million gallons per acre daily, which filtered on an average 59 million gallons per acre between scrapings. Three other places, Breslau, Altona, and Frankfurt, yielding 1.85, passed on an average 55 million gallons per acre between scrapings, and four other places, Bremen, Königsberg, Brunswick and Posen, yielding 1.34 million gallons per acre daily, passed only 40 million gallons per acre between scrapings. The works filtering at the highest rates thus filtered more water in proportion to the sand clogged than did those filtering more slowly, but I cannot think that this was the result of the rate. It is more likely that some of the places have clearer waters than others, and that this both allows the higher rate and causes less clogging than the more turbid waters.