Turbidity in water - please suggest how to overcome the problem

[prakure]

Hi all,

Good morning.

We are using a one horse-power bore to pump water into our water tank which will be supplied to a RO-water plant ( reverse osmosis) to make the water potable.
Initially, the water coming out of the bore will be very clean but after a few minutes, there seems to be some mud coming out in the water.
So, we have stopped supplying this water to the RO-plant until the turbidity issue is resolved.

1) I request you to suggest how to overcome this problem.
2) Also, if I use alum to treat the mud in the water, will it going to effect the RO-plant filters? If so, what are the other alternatives?

Thanks in anticipation.

Regards,
Praveen

 

[IRstuff]

Shouldn't you try to find the source first, rather than working on a patch? What if it gets worse? What if it starts coming in big chunks? Was this always the intent? Was the tank intended to allow the mud to settle out? How are you going to clean the debris from the tank itself? How do you know that the mud won't be so loaded with junk so as to completely throw the RO out of kilter?

Until you understand where the source is and what it will do over time, trying to come up with an ad hoc solution will most likely result in a ticking time bomb. Until you rein in the mud, your sediment filters will clog VERY fast, and you'll be changing them out more often than desirable. Additionally, the gunking of the filters will slow down the flow, and place extra load on the pumps and wear them out sooner. Anything that gets past the filters will screw with the RO membrane, which will be an expensive proposition, particularly if it can't be reverse flushed as intended.

TTFN
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[bimr]

I assume that this is a very small system since you say 1 HP water well.

You probably should plan to use mixed media filtration followed by a 5 micron cartridge filter prior to the RO. I have seen surface water successfully treated for solids removal with mixed media filters in series. The first mixed media filter is the working filter. The second mixed media filter is a polishing filter.

It may be necessary to coagulate fine colloidal materials using a coagulant. If so, an inorganic coagulant should be employed, such as an aluminum product or ferric chloride. If these materials break through the media filter, they will also foul the RO, but they can be removed with cleaning. The chemicals should be injected into a tank of sufficient size prior to the filters to allow enough reaction time for the suspended solids to bind with the coagulant before filtration.

If this is a small system, then the use of a coagulant is not practical. In such applications, you should try the filter without chemicals.

 

[prakure]

Thank you very much for your valuable suggestions.
Since the the bore is a fairly old one and as the soil seemed a bit *soft* and on the advice of some other professionals, we came to a conclusion that the operational cost of converting that bore water to potable water will be increasingly high as the days go by.
Hence decided to dig another bore at another place to overcome this.

Thanks again.

Best regards,
Praveen