Malhotra et al.

, (1997) studied the effectiveness of PAC and alum coagulants with reference to removal
of heavy metals. The authors concluded that both coagulants showed similar trends, but removal
efficiency increase in alkalinity of the raw water

Sinha et al., (2004) compared the effectiveness of alum and 5 other varieties of PAC coagulants with
regards to parameters such as acidity, solubility, active metal content, anion content and speciation.
Though it was reported that new age coagulants produce less sludge, the effect on sludge production
was not studied and reported.

Zouboulis et al., (2007) in their experiments found inorganic pre-polymerized coagulants to be superior
to conventional non-polymerized coagulants. Further, sludge production was relatively low in
polymerized coagulants compared to non-polymerized coagulants

Zouboulis et al., (2008) compared efficiency of PAC and alum coagulants by conducting full-scale
experiments in a drinking water treatment plant with respect to factors such as removal of turbidity and
residual aluminum concentration. They concluded that PAC was not only efficient than alum in terms of
water treatment, but also resulted in less sludge production.