The purpose of this study was to analyze water treatment characteristics, including the efficiency of removing algae from water purification plants, by installing a demonstration facility for decontamination of algae, including natural algae remover injection equipment, in the water purification plant. Jar-test showed that the optimum injection of natural decontaminant was 20 mg/L. Of the water contaminant treatment efficiency of the intake and water purification plants, Chl-a averaged 74.0% elimination efficiency from 5.0 mg/m3 to 1.3 mg/m3 and the maximum treatment efficiency was 91.5% removal efficiency when the inflow concentration of Chl-a was 11.8 mg/m3. In addition, 51.2% and 47.1% of the taste and odor indicator items, geosmin and 2-MIB, resulted from the overgrowth and decaying of algae, respectively, to identify toxic substances and odor reduction effects. In addition, elimination efficiencies of SS and Turbidity materials were higher than 70.0%. In the injection of natural algae remover, no effects such as sudden changes in water quality due to secondary reactions were found, and appropriate levels were maintained under water treatment conditions.

In the coagulation/sedimentation (C/S) process of the water treatment process, the inflow of massive algal bloom causes many problems including fouling of filter media. This study was conducted to find out the way to remove the algae’s harmful effects by addition of pre-treatment prior to C/S process. Many Jar-tests were conducted such as ① ACF (Algae Coagulation·Flotation) process using natural algae coagulant (Water Health®), ② ACF + C/S process and ③ C/S process with a variety of conditions using cultured algae. The average values of turbidity were ① 0.42 NTU for ACF process, ② 0.13 NTU for ACF + C/S process and ③ 0.25 NTU for C/S process. It was shown that the treatment efficiency of ACF process could get low turbidity results, and ACF + C/S process could achieve more efficient results than those of C/S process. Any negative effects of ACF process to the efficiency of C/S process were not observed in ACF + C/S process. In order to reduce the unfavorable effects of algae, it was found out that the introduction of ACF process in the forms of ① ACF or ② ACF + C/S could be one of the effective and alternative solutions.