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Our water supply at home is quite muddy / turbid even tho the filtration plant (which is quite near to where I live) uses lots of sand and charcoal to filter the water before adding chlorine.
It takes quite long to settle the mud in the water (nearly 48 hours). I would like to know if there's any method that would speed up this process? I have tried using alum but that leaves a sour taste in the water which I'm alergic to.
There are only a few ways that I know of. Perhaps someone else can help.
1. gravity drop - It requires the water to sit while the suspended particles settle out. I would think your water filtration plant would have a settling tank for that purpose.
2. Surfactants - Generally a chemical or other component that attracts the suspended particles. Once they gather together they become heavier and drop out quicker. There are some clays available but the only ones I'm aware of are for commercial application.
3. Filtration - The down side is very turbid water is going to play havoc on filters. You will be going through them very quickly.
Can I assume that your water system is a closed system from the plant to your faucet? That is they maintain some pressure and the water remains in a piping system from them to you? That's typical of most commercial systems but that will limit the options you have to remove the suspended particles.
Boil it in a big pot. It will settle by morning. Drill a hole in a 3/4 piece of wood and shove a siphon hose into it so siphons below the surface. Siphon into another big pot. You can run some nails though the 3/4 inch board if you want to keep it off the bottom. Watch and pull it or pinch it when it hits bottom. Comes out clean.
It's his water system. I don't think he can do that if he's running 45 psi or something like that.
I have settled water often enough, by boiling and siphoning when it was too cloudy, rusty or just plain dirty. It is much much faster than only waiting for it to settle. A fish tank with it's aireator and filter to clean the drinking water, might also serve the purpose if the charcoal is cheap enough. For more clean water, you would need something like a water softener. I used to have two quart size containers in my line with replaceable filters...maybe something like that would work for you. But nothing will last long.
I'm trying to picture the set-up, I take it the filtration plant you're talking of is the municipal plant that feeds the area. is this the case?
For municipal water, you may want to consider tying a swimming pool filter, using food grade diatomaceous earth http://wolfcreekranch1.tripod.com/defaq.html as a filter medium, into your household plumbing. You should use a back-flow preventor before the filter, and you may want to install a pressure tank after the filter as well. Yeah, it's a bit expensive, but we are talking about something as important as water quality, and it should solve your problem.
For added safety and improved water taste, you could put a second in-line charcoal filter (cannister type) before taps where you will draw drinking/cooking water, and you should be good to go.
I am not an expert in water filtration, but it should be noted that it would seem that "UnknownWarriors" water system is in Mumbai, India (the location he indicated on his profile). I doubt that anything short of reverse osmosis (not sure what it is, but the military used it to make safe water supplies in developing countries) would be needed to make the water safe. I am not certain that that would be economicaly possible for him.
That's why I questioned if it was a closed system. I don't know how it works over there.
From reading the OP, I believe that his supply comes from a municipal water plant and distribution system.
My sympathy to you UnkownWarrior. It seems you have a tough road to go to get safe water. I dug up this article, kind of old, but probably no significant change.
Article from India Daily News
Mumbai water totally polluted – people in hundreds dying because of lack of medicines – politicians hiding
Sudhir Chadda
Aug. 14, 2005
It is time for Mumbai politicians to come forward and take charge. More than two hundred people have died because of polluted water. Medicines are supposed to be in the inventory but in actuality people are dying because of lack of it.
Hospitals in Mumbai were on Sunday battling with acute shortage of medicines as the death toll due to waterborne diseases crossed 150 following last month's heavy rains and floods.
According to media reports, the Government agencies claim antibiotics and other important medicines are in abundant supply, hospital authorities and relatives of patients maintain shortage of drugs was hampering the battle against diseases like leptospirosis, dengue, malaria and gastric diseases.
Most of the deaths were reported over the past week from the densely populated city suburbs that were worst affected by the unprecedented floods.
Official sources said the actual death toll could be higher as most casualties in private hospitals have not been reported to the civic agencies.
"Drug consignments have been severely damaged due to the recent flooding in warehouses," said Chandi Batliwala, joint secretary of the Maharashtra Red Cross Society.
"This has resulted in acute shortage of drugs in the city and suburban areas of Mumbai."
The Indian Red Cross Society said it has received a contribution of 400,000 tablets of doxycycline, a preventive medicine for leptospirosis, from Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd.
"We will coordinate with our non-government organisation partners and hospitals to ensure proper allocation of the drug," said Batliwala.
Although Unknowns question is about settlement of residue, I think a more sophisticated method would better serve. My interest was tweaked by the question, and the general area, so I did some googling. Here are some representative articles of the water quality that he is facing in Mumbai:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/a...w/15799944.cms
http://www.karmayog.org/environment/...nment_2870.htm
I am sorry I can not offer any meaningful help or advice, but I do wish you good luck.
Yep, getting particles out of water (down to 1 micron in size) is tough because of the electrostatic charges keeping them suspended. That is where surface active chemicals called "flocculants" are used. The flocculants cause the sediments to clump together so they can be more easily filtered out. Most city water systems try to skip on flocculants because it is an ongoing cost, as it will be for you if you do your own flocculation and filtering. Most water flocculation uses aluminum sulfate, but I got a list of several from Wikipedia, and it looks accurate fro what I remember of surface chemistry:
The following chemicals are used as flocculants:[Wikipedia: Flocculation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocculation ]. I know about the chemicals, I don't know about the "natural" products listed.
alum
aluminium chlorohydrate
aluminium sulfate
calcium oxide
calcium hydroxide
iron(III) chloride
iron(II) sulfate
polyacrylamide
polyDADMAC
sodium aluminate
sodium silicate
The following natural products are used as flocculants:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocculation]
Chitosan
Moringa oleifera seeds
Papain
A species of Strychnos (seeds)
Isinglass
In any case, a filter follows flocculation. Swimming pools need periodic treatment with a flocculant, and the filters need to be cleaned frequently after being treated with these. I've done water systems in third world countries, and generally skip flocculation because it generally doesn't make people sick, it is usually just an appearance thing. Chlorination after filtering takes care of any bio-actives.
Sorry, too much chemical information again.
Tom: Finally someone that knows. Can't say I understand much of it though:)
Strange that the search results don't list this thread when I search with my username. get other threads fine, tho.
Your assumption is correct, it's a closed system from the municipality to the homes, unless the piping is purposely broken by some bad people to get water for free.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick
I'm already using alum to settle the mud but it makes the water sour to taste (bad for throat) tho is somewhat faster.Quote:
Originally Posted by edr730
Using an 8 fold cloth, still the water colour was muddy.
Alum would be no. 2 above then. But can you tell me more about what clays are these you mentioned? I like the clarity of water after circling it with alum a few times and it settles faster, but the taste ...Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick
Surely filter is not an option. But I got a pdf from some site that treats rain water, using a three bucket filter, using act. charcoal in between two layers of differnt sized gravel and one of fine sand above and below. It's an upflow design. Would this kind of system work for turbid water?
Here's the link:
http://www.green-trust.org/freebooks/bucketfilter.pdf
Alum is far cheaper than boiling so much water. I started using SODIS but now the water is turbid, so boiling is better, and then filtering. But again it costs a lot of gas to boil so much water.Quote:
Originally Posted by edr730
I already have about half a kg of act. charcoal pellets. I could easily get the fish tank water filter. Could you explain a little bit on this?
The first one is not about Mumbai tho it starts with the word Mumbai. Yes I very well remember the day when I had to stay at a friend's house that night in the 2005 Mumbai floods. He was a Godsend for me and I was lucky to see him at the office bus stop.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pal334
But there has to be a way for the water to make it clear. When people living in the dense Africa and using really bad water to drink are able to purify it and clean it, this turbidity in Mumbai tap waters is nothing compared to that.
I read some electric means of coagulation on google, but would like to either do it myself (DIY) or some cheap alternative.
I understood this info perfectly now , last night I skipped reading when it kinda went above my head. I'd like to know which one in the wikipedia list is easy to get, similar to alum?Quote:
Originally Posted by TomChemEngineer
Do you mean it is OKAY to drink the turbid water if it's boiled / chlorinated and filtered?
Ken, can you please give some more detail and / or some pics (even if you make it manually in mspaint). That will let me picturize it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken
Unknown warrior, this probably wont be of any help to you but as a point of intrest...I use seeds of the horse raddish tree (moringa oleifera) known locally by the name Murunga, and the seed of strychnose potatorum known as "ingini" for clearing muddy water. the sediment settles fast when the crushed seed are added to the water. (20-25 minutes) I usually have a few seeds on one or the other in my survival pack.
I was wondering I might not get them here in India but the name Murunga sounded south-indianish to me and I see it's from sri-lanka.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay
Good, I'll try to get it, probably will ask someone in Delhi about it.Quote:
Moringa Oleifera is a tree which is also native to Northern India.
Hi UK. Alum is usually available in grocery stores near the canning supplies and sometimes in little jars in the spice section. It used to be used in pickling... not sure anymore since I don't pickle. My mom used it to make pickles crunchy. It is a sodium-aluminum sulfate and is probably the easiest to get. Those who are hesitant to use it because it has aluminum in it... well, you have to make that choice. City water supplies use alum to flocculate the water ahead of the sand filters.Quote:
Originally Posted by UnknownWarrior
You are correct. Turbidity is not necessarily a bad thing if it is after chlorination or boiling, since the bad stuff (bio-actives) associated with the particles would be inactivated by that time. It is not very pretty to drink turbid water, but it won't really hurt you if it is just from clay particles or normal stuff in the water.
The other thing to consider is if the turbidity is from an iron-bacteria that comes out of some wells. The chlorination will take care of that, too, though.
Just my opinion, having done a few water systems.
Alum is used all over India for treating turbid water, even in the villages. The ony thing is that it has to be used for quite some time for getting a nice clear water. And due to this long time (a few slow circles in the water), the water becomes sour in taste, sometimes even affecting the throat. I hate it as much as the turbid water. I also causes me sneezing.Quote:
Originally Posted by TomChemEngineer
I tried to use the act. charcoal filter but that one is for the bush so it doesn't remove the turbidity though it does make the water clearer a bit more than direct tap.
Right now I boiled some water and kept it to settle. Other than this I think I do not have much option. It is hard for me to drink water these days, that's why I'm searching for a good and cheap solution.
I did find something tho - the bio-sand filter. It's a one time investment. It might help and I might make one tho it would need some time. Still have to do some reading at http://www.biosand.org
Anyway, thanks for the turbidity info, atleast the boiled water is safe to drink even tho not nice to look at. It's been a long time I'm searching for a nice filter and purifier with cheap costs but ones I got from this forum and other places, well I am not satisfied I would say yet, or could not yet choose for the long term.
Boiling water is okay for sometime for me but not for long. I do not wish to waste fuel everyday ... well unless I'm able to make some solar water heater that works even in cloudy weathers ... and cheap.
Thanks for the info btw.
If edr730, or anyone else, can detail me this fish tank filter, it would be great.Quote:
Originally Posted by edr730
I don't have plans and I've never tried it or seen anyone who has. I felt a small pump would save labor, money and electricity and water filtered and aerated 20 times should be better than once. Someone has probably already done something similar. The diatomaceous earth suggested by Ken (and the entire system) seemed like the best idea, but not on a shoe string budget. The fish tank filter may work fine, but is not a high quality filter. You would need to see how well the fish tank filtered the water, then improve the system by experimenting with aerators, and better larger filters or filter medium as you learn. People at this site have some very good ideas about filters and filter mediums and similar information has been discussed. Check it out. An old food safe five gal. bucket that held pickles or other food would work as a reservoir for the drinking water. I suspect a 4 ft 4 inch PVC pipe filled with filter medium would make a good filter. A connection between the bucket and filter, at the bottom would fill the drinking water reservoir. Put an overflow tube on top and a faucet on the bottom of the bucket. You could simply pour water in the filter tube, use the pump to continually filter or make the system automatic. The system could be connected to your plumbing and made automatic fairly simple with the addition of salvaged parts from a refrigerator with an ice maker. I think the biggest problem may be the volume and speed of flow from the pump which could make the filter tube and bucket overflow. Double stacked, cheap 6 dollar timers for the pump would solve the problem.
Can't you just filter your drinking water through cloth? That should trap a large portion of the suspended particulate.
Here's a good article on the subject:Quote:
Originally Posted by UnknownWarrior
http://ezinearticles.com/?A-Whole-Ho...alth&id=707038
As an alternative, here's one example of the diatomaceous earth primary filter I suggested earlier. Simply tie the incoming water line to the intake and connect your indoor plumbing to the outlet. MAKE SURE YOU USE FOOD GRADE DIATOMACEOUS EARTH and NOT regular pool filter D.E. The filter is priced at $295.00.
http://secure.poolcenter.com/images/...TAR_FILTER.jpg
http://secure.poolcenter.com/prodinfo.asp?number=180050
Here is what an in-line charcoal filter looks like. There are dozens of types on the market. I have one connected to each of my ice makers. The installation is very simple to complete.
http://www.partsquik.com/prod/images/4392949.jpg
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