Jar Test Like a Pro: Best Practices to Tailor Jar Tests for Representative Results in Your System

Optimizing treatment processes in drinking water and wastewater is a high

priority to improve treatment performance, dose chemicals appropriately, meet

national and state water quality standards, and promote public and environmental

health. Many water and wastewater operators rely on intuition and experience

alone when managing their treatment systems, which should be supported by

objective tools such as jar testing to promote operational optimization. Despite

their clear value for system optimization, jar tests for tuning and selecting

coagulant and polymer doses are seldom used in small- and medium-sized plants

due to a variety of barriers (e.g., budget, lack of technical expertise/resources,

time constraints, and non-representative results). These barriers can restrict the

ability of these systems to achieve the best water quality possible given their

plant configuration and operational controls, leading to frustration around plant

optimization, particularly when systems experience water quality shocks such as

spring runoff, wildfire events, or other water quality changes. It may be time to

revisit your jar testing strategy – or lack thereof. This presentation and workshop

will teach you and engage you in tailoring jar test procedures and strategies

based on the operational design of real water or wastewater plants using case

studies and examples from the audience, whether conventional, direct filtration,

dissolved air flotation, or otherwise. Best practices will be discussed for

designing the jar test procedure, selecting chemicals and doses, collecting

samples, and taking water quality measurements to support operational decisionmaking.

Interactive group work will engage the audience in working together to

apply these best practices considering real-world scenarios – including designing

jar testing strategies for their own treatment systems in small groups. The

outcome of this session will be to improve the audience’s ability to design and

apply jar testing strategies to improve their plant’s performance and adapt to

changes in water quality and plant operations, as well as inform them on where

to find resources and get help. Improving the ability of plants to optimize their

process through appropriate jar testing will result in higher water quality and

better public and environmental health across Colorado.