Water Treatment: What Works and What Doesn’t

Posted November 21st, 2016

Gene Franks, Water Softener, Water Treatment 101

Water Treatments that Work and Those that Don’t

by Gene Franks

The eminent water treatment specialist Peter S. Cartwright, a man of long experience and unchallenged expertise in the field, recently published a two part article in Water Conditioning and Purification magazine (October and November 2016) that concentrates on some of the shady areas of water treatment. Mr. Cartrwright skips the obvious health-related humbugs like “alkalizers” and concentrates on the technical aspects of genuine water treatment issues like scale prevention, TDS reduction, and removal or inactivation of bacteria and cysts.

Mr. Cartwright focuses first and foremost on devices that “soften” water. For decades now there have been numerous attempts to replace the conventional ion exchange water softener. Currently in North America some 785,000 residential and 60,000 commercial water softeners are sold annually, so there are strong incentives to tap into that market with alternative products. Conventional ion exchange water softeners, which actually remove scale-forming calcium carbonate (hardness) from water by exchanging it for sodium, work well and their performance can be easily verified by a simple test. However, there are many environmental and aesthetic objections to conventional softeners, so the quest for a workable alternative has been intense.

Mechanical Vortex Style “Softener”

In his discussion, Cartwright does not include alternate technologies like membrane devices (reverse osmosis and nano filtration) and sequestering systems (polyphosphates). He divides alternative scale reducing systems into five groups:

Magnetic devices that use one or more permanent magnets either attached to a pipe or inside the pipe.

Electromagnetic systems, more sophisticated than natural magnets, that also attempt to influence the way that treated scale-forming minerals behave without actually removing the minerals.

Mechanical devices that are designed to alter the pressure and flow pattern of water and somehow alter its chemistry in the process (see picture above).

Electrostatic systems that typically use two electrodes charged with high voltage DC current which alter the calcium carbonate as the water stream passes between them so that surface scaling is reduced.

Catalytic devices. These come in many configurations and sizes but are mainly housings that hold a proprietary medium designed to impart scale-reducing properties to water that passes through it. Unlike conventional softeners, they do not require power, backwashing, or chemicals. The technology is usually referred to as TAC (Template Assisted Crystallization), although one leading manufacturer calls its product NAC (Nucleation Assisted Crystallization).

What all these systems have in common is that they aim (and claim) to convert calcium carbonate into a form that does not stick to surfaces. The explanation involves the two crystalline forms of calcium carbonate, calcite, which forms hard scale, and aragonite, which supposedly does not attach to surfaces to form scale. (Although there are other constituents of hardness scale, like iron, silica, sulfate, and manganese, the main culprit is calcium carbonate in crystalline form, to that’s what most treatment strategies focus on.)

So, do any of these five strategies actually work?

According to Peter S. Cartwright:

With hundreds of manufacturers who have offered thousands of devices to the industry over the years, it is difficult to make all-inclusive statements. At the risk of doing so, my conclusion is that, with the exception of TAC, no [scale preventing] device has actually survived rigorous third-party scientific credible testing to support the reduction claims made for it.

Cartwright describes TAC technology as follows:

This process, which came on the scene in 1998, appears to minimize scaling without requiring regeneration or utilizing ion exchange. TAC utilizes polymer beads, not unlike the ion exchange resin in traditional water softeners. These beads, however, contain microscopic nucleation sites that cause calcium and magnesium crystals to form at the site and ultimately detach from the resin into the water as insoluble particles. These colloidal-sized particles do not attach to surfaces and are carried out with the water. As a result, although TAC does not actually remove hardness, it does minimize scale attachment to surfaces. This process requires no power, chemical addition or backwashing. The life of the resin is typically about three years. It has been thoroughly tested by credible, third-party institutions and has been shown to generally perform as claimed; however, the local water chemistry appears to have an effect on performance. For example, TAC has been shown to be ineffective for silica removal.

TAC units are simple upflow systems that contain only a few liters of TAC resin. No regeneration is required, but they should be protected from sediment and media life is extended if they are protected from chlorine.

Reference: Water Conditioning and Purification

PFCs

Posted November 14th, 2016

Emerging Contaminants

The Emergence of “Emerging Contaminants”

The EPA in 2006 made a deal with eight American companies that make or use perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) to stop doing so. These chemicals are parts of a larger class of chemicals known as perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), which in turn falls under the larger group heading of “emerging contaminants.” Emerging contaminants are defined as materials having “a perceived, potential, or real threat to human health or the environment.”

The companies say that they have complied, but the EPA has made little progress in setting up any real standards or guidelines about the dangers of lifetime exposure to the chemicals.

There is a need for such determinatation, since these man-made chemicals have been linked to a disturbing array of health effects, including obesity in children, reproductive problems and cancers. Used as a surface-active agent in a slew of products from coating additives – like Teflon – to cleaning products, these compounds don’t break down under typical conditions and are extremely persistent in the environment, says the EPA.

And while PFCs may no longer be in active production, they are still being used. And, as we’re learning, there is no scarcity of them.

Telflon used in cookware coating, that was generally regarded as safe for many years, is no longer considered so. Teflon has been much in news. Far less publicized, outside the areas where it is being found in water supplies, mostly around military bases, is PFC-containing firefighting foam.

When jet fuel burns, it makes a fire that isn’t easy to put out. Water doesn’t work. So, half a century ago the 3M Corporation, with the encouragement of the US Navy, developed a product known as AFFF (Aqueous Film-Forming Foam) to put out airplane crash fires. AFFF contains PFOS and other compounds that break down to PFOA and other PFCs.

For years AFFF has been used to put out fires and even more widely in training exercises, demonstrations, and testing activities on military bases around the nation. So it is not surprising that communities near military bases are finding PFCs in the soil and in their drinking water. With a lack of concern that has been characteristic of the military in matters of water safety, no effort was made to construct barriers to contain the foam, which sank down through the earth into the water table.

According to a Provisional Health Advisory issued by the EPA in 2009, the maximum levels that humans should be exposed to through drinking water is 0.2 ppb for PFOS and 0.4 ppb for PFOA. Although the agency has said repeatedly that it will update these numbers, it hasn’t done so since 2009.

According to one researcher, “In some of these places, huge amounts of chemicals from the foam have been found in soil and water. At Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, for instance, one of the telomers that can decay into a chemical similar to PFOA was found at 14,600 ppb. Near the Naval Air Station in Fallon, Nevada, where fire-training exercises were conducted for more than 30 years, PFOA has been recorded in the groundwater at levels as high as 6,720 ppb. And, at the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Michigan, where crash trainings also took place for more than three decades, one plume of groundwater had concentrations of total PFCs between 100,000 and 250,000 ppb.”

While advanced countries like Sweden, the EU, and Canada have banned the use of existing stockpiles of foam containing PFOS, the US has no restrictions on its use. The US military has a stockpile of a million gallons.

Home water treatment for PFCs in drinking water? Studies done by the Minnesota Department of Health find that both carbon filtration and reverse osmosis effectively remove PFCs.

Reference: Treehugger.com.

Chicago Law Mandates Drug Take-Back

Posted November 3rd, 2016

Health and Medicine

Drug Take-Back Program Aims at Protecting People and Water from the Outrageous Amounts of Leftover Drugs

Cook County, Ill., adopted an ordinance that will provide more than 5 million residents with convenient access to safe drug disposal. The ordinance makes Cook County the largest jurisdiction in the U.S. to require drug companies to safely dispose of unwanted medications, and adds to the two states, nine counties and two cities in the U.S. with similar drug take-back laws.

More than $1 billion in leftover drugs are thrown in the trash, flushed or consigned to medicine cabinets each year. Prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing drug problem in the U.S., and nearly 70% of people who begin using prescription drugs non-medically get them from a family member or friend, often from medicine cabinets. Drugs left in the home also put seniors, children and pets at risk for accidental poisoning. When flushed or put in the trash, over-the-counter medications and prescription drugs can contaminate drinking water and harm aquatic species.

Source: Water Quality Products.

Water News

Posted November 1st, 2016

Hardly Waite

Water News

October, 2016

Now, link free for your reading pleasure.

Police from five states were brought in to protect pipeline interests from unruly water protectors group pictured above sitting in a prayer circle in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

A Texas state legislator is proposing a vast underground water storage system that would keep the state in water during a drought of up to seven years.

Louisville gets its drinking water from the Ohio River. It is currently finding about 20 ppt of PFOA, or C8 (Teflon), in its water. The recently established EPA health advisory level for PFOA is 70 parts per trillion.

The title of world’s deepest underwater cave now belongs to the Hranice Abyss in the Czech Republic. An expedition team led by Polish explorer Krzysztof Starnawski used a custom-designed underwater vehicle to descend to a record-breaking 1,325 feet into the murky depths.

Another leak of radioactive water occurred at the the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

The US Air Force is drilling 18 test wells in an attempt to determine how perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs, contained in firefighting foam, is contaminating water south of Colorado Springs. PFCs, which have been linked to prostate, kidney and testicular cancer, were found earlier this year in water systems serving about 69,000 people in Fountain, Security and Widefield. Subsequent story: Air Force officials now admit that the base near Colorado Springs sent water laced with toxic firefighting foam into the city’s sewer system as often as three times a year.

Hurricane Matthew brought unprecedented flooding. Princeville NC, shown above, was underwater days after the torrential rains ceased.

A horse track in Scarborough, Maine is closing its barn because of horse manure contamination that is seeping into groundwater.

The Gannon men’s water polo team snapped a 19-19 deadlock with three unanswered goals during the final 69 seconds to win a 22-19 exhibition shoot-out against Mount San Antonio.

Weeks after the hurricane, clean water is still not available to thousands of Haitians.

Recent studies have revealed the unexpected truth that the world’s water storage reservoirs are major producers of greenhouse gas, accounting for 1.3 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases—as much as the entire country of Canada. Reservoirs are big producers of methane in particular, which is 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide in environmental degradation.

This map, made by Imgurian Fejetlenfej, shows all the different river basins around the country. The Mississippi River basin is shown in pink. It takes up most of the map.

A UNESCO organization released a list of the world’s top ten water consuming countries. And the winners are:

China: 1.5 billion people, 362 trillion gal
U.S.: 300 million people, 216 trillion gal
Brazil: 175 million people, 95 trillion gal
Russia: 143 million people, 71 trillion gal
Mexico: 100 million people, 53 trillion gal
India: 1.1 billion people, 30 trillion gal
England: 60 million people, 20 trillion gal
France: 60 million people, 20 trillion gal
Canada: 33 million people, 19 trillion gal
Australia: 20 million people, 12 trillion gal

Over onr million gallons of water were lost when a 24” water main broke in Middletown, CT. “To give perspective, the average in-ground swimming pool holds 7,000 gallons—so losing 1 million gallons is like losing the water in 142 in-ground pools in an hour.”

A Pennsylvania university student accused of putting bleach in his pregnant girlfriend’s drinking water in an attempt to harm her fetus has been charged with attempted murder and held on $1,000,000 bond.

A $250 million drinking water tunnel, called a siphon, from Brooklyn to Staten Island has been activated. The tunnel will be capable of delivering up to 150 million gallons of water per day to Staten Island.

In the city of Groves (TX) tests found lead in the water of 25% of the homes tested. City authorities blame the high lead findings on solder in the pipes of the homes themselves.

Chlorine/Chloramine, Flow Rate/Pressure Drop

Posted October 29th, 2016

Chloramine, Chlorination, Gene Franks, Water Treatment 101

Chlorine and Chloramine Reduction

How flow rate affects media longevity and pressure drop

by Gene Franks

Pentair’s ChlorPlus 20BB

I’m going to make some generalizations about water treatment that are based on information from a single advertising brochure: Pentair’s ChlorPlus Series information sheet. The sheet gives performance data for two Pentair cartridge series, the ChlorPlus carbon block filters in four standard sizes and the unique CRFC radial flow carbon series in two high-flow sizes.

Here is some basic information you deduce from the Pentair sheet:

Carbon reduces both chloramine and chlorine.

Although specialty carbons are often used to enhance chloramine reduction, any carbon filter will remove chloramine if you give it enough contact time. This is contrary to information supplied by some anti-chloramine groups which would have it that chloramine is “impossible” to remove. And, in answer to another frequent question, filters that remove chloramine also remove chlorine.

Carbon lasts much longer when treating chlorine than it does when treating chloramine.

The ChlorPlus 10 (9.75″ x 2.5″ drinking water size) is rated for 50,000 gallons at 1 gallon per minute (gpm) when treating chlorine and only 1,000 when treating chloramine at the same flow rate. This fifty to one ratio is typical.

Performance and longevity vary considerably according to flow rate.

The CRFC20-BB “whole house” 4.5″ X 20″ cartridge has a chloramine capacity of 25,000 gallons when treating a flow stream of 2.5 gpm and only 10,000 gallons when the flow rate doubles to 5 gpm. This has interesting implications if you’re buying a whole house filter. Consider what happens if you need to treat five gallons per minute and you use two filters and split the stream between them. When compared with the single filter, the two-filter system doesn’t treat twice as many gallons; it treats five times as many gallons. At 5 gpm, one filter has a 10,000 gallon service life, but two filters at the same flow rate have a 50,000 gallon life expectancy.

Pressure drop across a filter increases greatly as flow rates increase.

The CRFC20-BB reduces water pressure by 2.5 psi at a 5 gpm flow rate and less than 1 gpm when flowing at 2.5 gpm. The faster the flow, the greater the pressure drop: another excellent reason to split your whole house service stream between two filters installed in parallel.

Pentair’s Radial Flow Chloramine Cartridge, CRFC20-BB

The principles above apply not only to Pentair cartridges and not only to chloramine and chlorine reduction. For large, tank-style filters with granular carbon, for example, you’ll get much longer service life and less pressure drop if the unit is adequately sized. A carbon backwashing filter designed to handle a 4 gallon per minute flow will “work” if you run six or seven gpm through it, but the carbon with need replacement much sooner and you’ll experience greater pressure drop than you would with a filter designed to handle 6 gpm comfortably.

For more information with pictures of parallel installations with cartridge filters, see “Multi-filter installations provide better flow, better water.”

Roman Technology–Combined Sewers–Still in Use

Posted October 29th, 2016

Politics of Water, Wastewater

Outdated Sewage Technologies Are Still in Wide Use in the US

The Romans developed a technology, still used today, called combined sewers. It is effective at what it was designed for–moving sewage and stormwater off city streets and out of the city as quickly as possible.

London copied this technology beginning inthe 1800s and many US cities built these combined sewers from the 1850s to about 1920. The combined sewage and stormwater was discharged directly into rivers and lakes accomplishing the designed purpose of getting it out of the city as quickly as possible. This was considered good enough at the time, and treatment was added later in some systems.

For systems that have added treatment, the combined sewer system works fine–when the weather is dry. But when it rains, combined sewers receive stormwater faster than treatment plants can handle it. Some of this combined sewage makes it to the treament plant, but if there is too much rain, as there often is, the treatment plant can’t handle the overload and excess combined discharge simply goes to the river or lake. In a word, some of the discharge, raw sewage from homes, flows untreated directly to the lake or river.

There are more combined sewers still in use in the US than one would imagine. New Jersey, for example, has almost 300.

When water suppliers speak of the need for “infrastructure upgrade,” getting rid of combined sewers is one of the things they’re talking about.

Zeolite Filter Media

Posted October 22nd, 2016

Backwashing Filter, Water Treatment 101

Natural Zeolite Media for Fine Sediment Filtration

For many years the standard granular media used to reduce sediment were “multi media” combinations featuring such ingredients as garnet, anthracite, and sand. These mixed bed filters usually resulted in filtration down to 10 to 15 microns.

More recently, high purity zeolite has become the medium of choice for sediment filtration. Modern zeolite filters achieve a 5µ nominal rating, with a couple of brands claiming to be even tighter.

There are some 40 known types of natural zeolites. The most common is clinoptilolite.

Clinoptilolite is classified as “a crystalline, aluminum, silicon, oxide mineral.” It is most commonly used in a 14 X 40 mesh format and weighs about 55 pounds per cubic foot. Clinoptilolite resists abrasion and has a very high surface area. Most clinoptilolite used in water treatment is mined in the western United States.

Commercially, clinoptilolite is marketed for residential filtration under such brand names as Micro Z and Turbidex. It has a GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) classification and most brands have NSF Standard 61 certification to assure that they are adding nothing objectionable to the water.

Tests have shown natural zeolites to consistently outperform “multi-media” filters in terms of dirt holding capacity, service flow rate, and ease of backwash.

Zeolites can be used to treat almost any sediment or precipitated contaminant, like iron rust. Zeolite can be backwashed with a moderate amount of water and it supports generous service flow rates. Studies have shown it to have 2.5 the solids loading capacity of sand. It can go longer between backwash sessions.

Turbidex Clinoptilolite Filters in Popular Residential Sizes

Mineral Tank	Cubic Feet of Turbidex	Control Valve	Average Maximum Service Flow in GPM	Backwash Required in GPM	Price
10″ X 54″ Vortech	1.5	Fleck 5600 SXT	9	7	$764
12″ X 52″ Vortech	2	Fleck 2510 SXT	14	8	$849
13″ X 54″ Vortech	2.5	Fleck 2510 SXT	17	10	$1029

Fleck 2510 SXT Control. A tough filter valve with simple electronic programming.

Please call (888) 382 3814 for more information about the filters described above.

More information about Turbidex, the media used in the filters listed above.

More information about the zeolite filters on this page.

The interesting history of zeolite filters.

Andrew Young on “Fluoridegate”

Posted October 16th, 2016

Fluoride

Andrew Young Views Fluoridation of Water as a Civil Rights Issue

Civil rights pioneer, former mayor of Atlanta, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young has sent a letter to the governor of Georgia calling for hearings to investigate why water fluoridation is continuing despite numerous reasons for ending the practice.

“This is a civil rights issue,” Young says, “and the people have a right to have the full story given to them, rather than highly edited, misleading talking points.”

The letter was also sent to American Water Works Association CEO David LaFrance.

For decades, most messaging about fluoridation has focused on the goal of cavity prevention, with little discussion about fluoride risks to tissues outside the mouth. Young points out that the story offered by promotors of fluoridation has changed over the years. “When someone’s story keeps changing, there are quite often motivations behind their changed stance that may not be aligned with the best interests of the public,” he says. “Are we sacrificing the health and safety of our communities simply because dentists don’t want to be embarrassed, or sued?”

Dental industry influence and control over the messaging points about fluoridation received by the public and officials is one of a number of issues surfacing in the public health scandal that many are now referring to as Fluoridegate.

Another issue is that adding fluoride chemicals to drinking water is a practice fraught with uncertainty, as there is no way to monitor or control the dose of fluorides individuals will receive, including kidney patients, diabetics, thyroid patients, persons in low income and minority communities, and workers in certain professions.

Those who consume large amounts of water because of outdoor work in hot environments, Young says, are especially at risk. Outdoor workers are a “susceptible subpopulation,” who may be especially at risk for fractures because of bone deterioration brought on by excessive fluoride consumption.

The uncontrolled dosing and selective messaging of points about fluoridation are not lost on attorneys arming themselves for a number of types of fluoride harm litigation.

“Fluoridated water presents a very wide array of legal problems on the personal injury side, and of course there are civil rights, consumer protection, employee injury and right-to-know aspects also,” says attorney Chris Nidel.

“Fluoridegate hearings and upcoming legal cases will put people under oath about all this.”

Influential public figures such as Erin Brockovich, Dr. Mark Hyman, Alveda King and other leaders are also calling for Fluoridegate hearings. Dr. Hyman is a nine-time New York Times bestselling author.

Ink Blotter

Posted October 15th, 2016

Uncategorized

Pure Water Products Brings Back the Ink Blotter

Back in the olden days when people bravely drank water straight from the tap and got milk straight from the cow, ink blotters were popular and necessary items. Before ballpoint pens, people wrote on paper by dipping a sharpened feather (called a quill) or a metal pen tip into an ink container. After transferring the ink to the paper in the shape of letters and words, they “blotted” what they had written with absorbent paper called an ink blotter to dry the excess ink and thus prevent runs and smears on the page. Ink blotters were popular items in homes and offices and were frequently used as bearers of advertising.

Since quills are now seldom used, ink blotters have fallen into disuse. Until now. We decided to bring back the blotter by creating one that works with today’s writing instruments. This blotter is guaranteed to prevent ink runs and smears on anything you write. It works with ballpoint pens, computer screens, phones–any modern writing instrument. What’s best is that you don’t even have to blot the words on the screen. Just keep it anywhere in your home or office and, as if by magic, it prevents smears on anything you write. Trust us. It works great!

You can print this blotter directly off the screen and it will work fine. To fully activate the magical properties of the blotter, however, you have to read the advertising printed on back of the paper version. See below:

Blotter Advertising.