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Water filtering


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The results of the (expensive!) water test are back. The biggest problem with my water is the amount of TDS (total dissolved solids), and there is really just one way to get that down to good levels: Reverse Osmosis. But there is another problem with that: The water has a high fouling index and lots of dissolved organic carbon (yum yum for bacterial growth), so you have to solve that problem before you can put it into an RO system. The recommended way of solving that problem... is ozone treatment. In other words... it's probably not worth it to take it all the way to drinking water levels.

In fact, the report reads pretty much like a horror story

The advice I obtained so far recommends putting the water in a tank (with a draw-off some way above the bottom) and adding Alum. Then add a bit of chlorine, put it through a set of filters (probably 20 micron, 5 micron, and activated carbon) and what comes out will probably be suitable for laundry purposes, or for feeding an RO rig.

So, any advice will still be appreciated, experiences, etc. At the moment I'm using it untreated directly in toilets.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I'm toying around with Ozone. Spending way too much money on this, but I'm having fun along the way and I don't play golf... so there.

I treated a bucket of water, 10 liters, by injecting some ozone into it. The results were rather interesting. First, the water smells much better (that's not really surprising), but the colour suffers. It turns from an almost clear slightly brown to almost brown-red. Then if you leave it standing overnight, a red residue sinks to the bottom. This is probably the oxidised iron, at least I hope so. In theory, the oxidised elements can be filtered out much easier using conventional filters, a 20 micron followed by a 5 micron and then a carbon filter.

Treated with Ozone on the left untreated on the right.

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This is the gunk that drops to the bottom. By the next morning there were more, some as large as grains of sand:

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Finally, here's my little makeshift testing rig. I still need to find a suitable tank/container of no more than 500 liters (in the right colour, therein the trouble) that I can use as a treatment chamber.

Again, looking forward to some comments, positive or negative.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Some progress on this front. First, I upscaled the project somewhat.

22829112_10155648859075619_6680418145125955463_o.thumb.jpg.eb613628df7dee896ecfac68919452d0.jpg

After a while I started to see this:

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And this is what came out at the bottom of the tank, after a day or two.

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I ran a control test by filling the tank and leaving it untreated (nobody wants to discover later that simple exposure to air did the same work) and it does seem that it's the Ozone treatment that has this wonderful effect.

I had a big old concrete block installed today where this plant (and the larger storage tank for the output) will be stored. Hopefully we'll get this done before Christmas :-P

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