Speeding up water settlement

[UnknownWarrior]

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.

[Rick]

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.

[edr730]

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.

[Rick]

It's his water system. I don't think he can do that if he's running 45 psi or something like that.

[edr730]

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.

[Winnie]

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?

[Ken]

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.

[Pal334]

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.

[Rick]

That's why I questioned if it was a closed system. I don't know how it works over there.

[Ken]

From reading the OP, I believe that his supply comes from a municipal water plant and distribution system.

[Pal334]

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.

[Pal334]

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.

[TomChemEngineer]

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.

[Pal334]

Tom: Finally someone that knows. Can't say I understand much of it though

[UnknownWarrior]

Strange that the search results don't list this thread when I search with my username. get other threads fine, tho.

[UnknownWarrior]

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.

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.

[UnknownWarrior]

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.

I'm already using alum to settle the mud but it makes the water sour to taste (bad for throat) tho is somewhat faster.

Using an 8 fold cloth, still the water colour was muddy.

[UnknownWarrior]

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.

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 ...

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

[UnknownWarrior]

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.

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.

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?

[UnknownWarrior]

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.

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.

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.