The Importance of Industrial Water Treatment
Industrial water treatment is vital to ensuring clean, safe and reliable industrial water for use in your facility. It helps to protect equipment from damage caused by scale and corrosion, and it ensures that quality standards are met when water is discharged.
Mechanical filtration methods such as reverse osmosis are used to filter contaminants from industrial wastewater. Aeration systems and diffusers are also used to add oxygen to the water, which breaks up waste and improves water quality.
Coagulation and Flocculation
Coagulation is a water treatment process that works to remove the turbidity (cloudy appearance) from the water. It uses a harmless chemical to cause all of the particles to give off a positive charge and clump together, making them easier to filter out. It is a common procedure used in many sectors of industry, such as textiles, food, slaughterhouses, surface treatment on metals, etc.
The first step of the coagulation and flocculation process involves adding a coagulant to the water, usually iron or aluminium salt or organic polymers, along with coagulation aids. These are mixed rapidly in a flash-mix tank so that the chemicals are dispersed evenly throughout the water and can begin to work immediately. The second step involves gentle agitation to encourage particle collision and enhance the growth of flocs, which can be either cationic or anionic depending on the water quality. Lastly, pH control reagents such as acids or bases are added to adjust the water pH to the optimal range for the reaction.
This is a very efficient method of industrial water treatment for removing turbidity, harmful bacteria and parasites, heavy metals and organic compounds such as phosphates. However, this treatment does produce a significant Industrial water treatment amount of sludge that must be properly managed to ensure compliance with environmental regulations and avoid secondary contamination. As a result, research into alternative coagulants and greener processes is ongoing.
Filtration
Water filtration is an important step in industrial water treatment, as it can reduce certain types of water fouling like corrosion. Filtration methods can range from physical filtering to biological treatment. In general, a mix of these approaches is often used in order to achieve the best results. This is because the optimum technique depends on the type of water and the specific industrial use.
The goal of a water treatment system is to provide clean, pure water for manufacturing processes. This is not only required by the regulations set out by environmental authorities, but it’s also critical to the operation of equipment. Industrial facilities often use water for heating, cooling, washing, boiler feed, firefighting, rinsing and more. Often, the quality of municipal water supplies is not enough to meet these requirements.
For this reason, many facilities have their own on-site water treatment systems to produce high-quality process water. These can include treatments such as sedimentation, softening, coagulation and flocculation to remove particles, organic material and turbidity from the water. Other treatments such as ion exchange and dealkalization reduce alkalinity to prevent scaling in the plant.
This process is similar to how we make tea, using a sieve to separate the solids from the liquid. This works because oversized particles are trapped over the porous medium, while the solvent particle can pass through. This allows the filtered liquid to remain free of the heterogeneous mixture, such as sand in a solution.
Disinfection
Many industrial processes require high-purity water. For example, medical sterilization requires deionized water to avoid dangerous infections. And in biomedical laboratories, the use of water contaminated with even trace amounts of contaminants can lead to incorrect experimental results. Industrial water treatment techniques are designed to deliver high-purity, potable water for all these applications. They may include physical removal of microorganisms, or the alteration of disinfectant demand.
Industrial water treatment typically begins with presedimentation to reduce large particles of organic and inorganic matter. Clarification techniques reduce at-home water purifier turbidity and improve the taste, appearance, and safety of water. These processes also facilitate disinfection.
Most raw waters contain organic material that exerts a “demand” for oxidizing disinfectants such as chlorine. These organic molecules have carboxyl, phenolic, and alcoholic hydroxyl functional groups that react with and consume chlorine to produce chloride ions and toxic disinfection byproducts (THM’s). The majority of these demand substances are naturally occurring humic substances (humic, fulvic, and hymatomelanic acids), which are complex polymeric molecules that contain aromatic rings and contribute to water color. Inorganic materials such as ferrous ions, nitrites, and hydrogen sulfide also exert a demand for oxidizing disinfectants.
Other treatments such as ion exchange, softening, and dealkalization can also substantially reduce the demand for oxidizing disinfectants. These and other processes also can improve water quality by removing organic material, reducing turbidity, and minimizing hardness and alkalinity.
Recycling
In a world of growing local water scarcity, wastewater recycling helps make a positive impact on sustainable operations. It also provides a competitive advantage in the global market.
Most industrial processes create some form of wastewater and must be discharged, re-used or disposed of based on quality characteristics and regulatory requirements. The process begins with pre-treatment to remove larger debris and coarse particles from the water. This may include screening, sand and gravel filtration, electrocoagulation or flocculation using solutions like Zeoturb.
Chemical treatment methods step in next to handle the organics and other harmful substances in the wastewater. Advanced oxidation processing and distillation are powerful allies in the war against non biodegradable pollution.
Ion exchange is a tried and true method where charged ions from the wastewater switch places with similar ions on immobile solid particles. This prevents them from reentering the water process and protects critical components such as cooling towers and boiler feed systems from corrosive scaling conditions.
Aeration and oxidation ponds are natural bodies of water that use microorganisms to degrade harmful chemicals such as phosphates and nitrates from the wastewater. Then neutralization steps in to balance pH levels to avoid too acidic or too alkaline conditions that can harm marine life when the wastewater is discharged into bodies of water. Finally, adsorption clings onto activated carbon filters or other medias like Natzeo to stick with the harmful contaminants just as velcro sticks with lint and hair.