Alternative to chlorine use in water treatment.

Published on by in Technology

Due to safety issues related to using chlorine and handling it which alternatives do you recommend? 

Which treatment can replace chlorination with good results and is economical? 

Which water treatment methods do you use and what is your experience with them? 

Taxonomy

4 Answers

  2. A really interesting option is the use of ozone for water disinfection. Among the advantages are the negligible toxicity of the compound and the absence of byproducts. Also, chlorine can be quite tricky to maintain at the proper level, whereas ozone injection is carried out by dedicated machinery.
    A common procedure is to employ ozonation as a pretreatment step and then add chlorine: this takes the best of both worlds, also ensuring that there is a proper residual concentration. 
    Oh also, no bad odours or weird tastes in the treated water.
    It is relatively more expensive than chlorination, so a thorough economic assessment would be required even before taking this into consideration.

    Hope it helps, but feel free to reach out for more information
     

  3. UV irradiation is indeed an option for disinfection but not the only one "that does not create damaging byproducts". Instead hydrogen peroxide H2O2 is used in many applications with adequate process controls and reaction time as to ensure the effectiveness of the dosing.

  4. Because of safety issues associated with the chlorine dosing, UV technology has experienced increased acceptance in both municipal and household systems. There are few large-scale UV water treatment plants in the United States are more than 2,000 such plants in Europe.

    UV is the only disinfectant that does not create damaging by products. It effectively inactivates all micro-organisms including protozoan cysts.

    The major drawbacks are:

    • It is not possible to check the effectiveness of the delivered dose by measuring the residual as in the case of chemical oxidants therefore it is essential for reactor to be equipped with UV intensity sensors
    • No residual effect so except of the case of the well maintained distribution network, it need to be combined with another disinfectant