Case Study: Treating well water to provide drinking water
Application:
A component processing industrial plant has implemented an automated wellwater treatment system based on reverse osmosis (1) with blending for optimum recovery and fit-for-purpose water quality. The choice of the right technical solution through the pretreatment equipment, the osmosis system but also the post-filtration and water disinfection equipment were based on a detailed analysis, first of all starting from the raw water characteristics, the technological requirement of the desired water flow and water quality at the outlet.
Problem:
The plant’s main water supply source is municipal tap water delivered by the local supplier. It is used both as drinking water and industrial water and all the downstream industrial water treatment processes and equipment are designed to work with it as raw water source.
The plant owns a deep-well drill water source that is cheaper, but has a lower quality compared to the tap. Plant utilities management was interested to efficiently treat the well water up to a quality similar to main water source, to ensure smooth transition between sources with better cost and prevent future water shortages.
Solution:
Klarwin together with the plant’s utilities management have defined the technology and quality parameters for treated water based on the usage.
Klarwin has implemented a high-performance automatic reverse osmosis water treatment system with high efficiency and blending with filtered raw water that contains:
- raw water mechanical pre-filtration stage by Pall technology (2), before a buffer tank
- energy efficient reverse osmosis membrane system supplied by a reputable European manufacturer
- sterilization stage for the blending water by the Pall microfiltration technology of 0,2µm (3)
- automatic permeate and blending water mixing system based on the continuous electrical conductivity measurement
- final disinfection with an automatic chlorination group, to comply with the drinking water regulations and ensure safe drinking water throughout the plant’s internal distribution network.
Treated water quality parameters are kept very close to the main water source, allowing the downstream industrial users that have implemented advanced treatment systems (e.g. for boiler water) to follow the same processes and procedures independent of the water source in use.
Benefits:
- Fully automatic system with integrated safety measures to maintain constant water quality.
- Maximum recovery of a RO based system due to blending system fit for water quality needs.
- Ensuring the physical-chemical characteristics of drinking water at lower costs compared to the water from the municipal network.
- High reliability of automatic system given by pre-filtering, membrane osmosis and sterilization stage, given the integration of state-of-the-art technologies.