WATER | SOURCES | TREATMENT PROCESS | PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL PROPERTIES | USES



Water: is one of the environmental resource .
Public Water Supply: refers to same clean water for use in home, schools, hospitals, workplaces, commercial and some industrial activities, street cleaning, and fine protection. Water for dainty personal hygiene and sanitary purposes is of paramount importance to in health and well –being of the society.


Water Quality Standards
Water contains a variety of chemical, physical and biological substances that are either dissolved or suspended in it. From the moment it condenses as rain, water dissolves the chemical components of its surrounding as it falls through the atmosphere, runs over ground surface, and percolates through the soil. Water also contends living organisms that react with its physical and chemical elements. For this reasons, water must often be treated before it is suitable for use.
                                 
Water quality requirement are established in accordance with the intended use of the water quality is usually judged as the degree to which water conforms to physical, chemical, and biological standards set by the user. Water quality standards are also essential in monitoring treatment processes.
Water is evaluated for qualify in terms of its physical, chemical, and microbiological properties.

Physical Characteristics
Tastes, odours, colour and turbidity are controlled in public water supplies pertly because they make drinking water unpalatable, but also because of the use of water in beverages, food processing and textiles Tastes and odours are caused by the presence of volatile chemicals and decomposing organic matter. Measurement for these are conduced on the basis of the dilution needed to reduce them to level barely detectable by human observation co lour in water is caused by minerals such as lion and manganese, organic materials and co lour water form industries. Testy is done by comparison with a standard set of concentrations of a chemical that produces a co lour similar to that found in water. Turbidity, as well as being aesthetically objectionable, is a health concern because the particles involved could harbor pathogens water with enough suspended clay particles will be visually turbid. Turbidity measurements are base on the optical properties of the suspension that cause light to be scattered or absorbed rather than transmitted in straight lines through the Samuel.

Chemical Characteristics
Many chemical compounds dissolved in water may be of natural or industrial origin and may be beneficial or harmful depend on their composition and concentration. For example, small amounts of lion and manganese may not just cause co lour, they can also be oxidized to form deposits of ferric hydroxide and manganese oxide in water mains and industrial equipment these deposits reduce the capacity of pipes and are expensive to remove.
Hard Water are generally considered to be those water that require considerable amounts. Of soap to produce a foam or lather and that also produce scale in not water pipes, heaters, boilers, and other units in which the temperature of water is increased materially.
                     
Sources of Water
The quality and quantify of water from surface water and ground water, the two main sources, are influenced by geography, chi male, and human activities. Ground water can normally be used with life or no treatment. Surface water, on the other hand, often needs extensive treatment, particularly if it is polluted.

Ground Water                             
Ground water: is water that has percolated down word from the ground useful through the soil pores. For motions of soil and rock that have become saturated with water are known as ground water reservoirs, or aquifers. Soil pore size water viscosity and other factors combine to limit the speed at which water can move through soil to replenish the well.
Ground water is not as susceptible to pollution as surface water, but once polluted its restoration, even if possible, is difficult and long term. This is why municipalities even those located close to surface water prefer wells for a municipal water supply much less treatment and there for expense is needed to bring ground water standards. Ground water quality is difficult to monitor when large number of well are in use.

Surface Water
Surface water is from rivers and levels are important sources of public water supplies be cause of the light with darnel rates they can normally sustain. One disadvantage of using surface water is that it is open to pollution of all kinds. Contaminants are contributed to lakes and rivers from diverse and intermittent sources, such as industrial and municipal wastes, run off from urban and agricultural areas, and erosion of soil water with variable turbidly and a variety of substance that contribute to the taste, odour, and co lour of the water can necessitate extensive treatment.

Seawater   
Seawater available in almost unlimited quantities, can be converted into fresh water by a number of processes
·                 Desalination is the general term used for the removal of dissolved salts from water.
Distillation, the oldest desalination techmvue depends on the evaporation and condensation in water.
·                 Energy intensive, but using solar energy to evaporate water may make it practical in countries with plentiful sunshine
·                 Freezing lowers the water temperature unit lice crystals free of salt can be separated from the brine.
·                 Electrodialysis involves forced migration of charged ions through Cation - permeable or anion –permeable membrane by applying an electric Potential across a cell   containing mineralized water.

Reclaimed Waste Water
Reclaimed waste water: is water that has been treated sufficiently for direct reuse in loop operation may offer only alternative in areas that cannot obtain enough fresh water. Suspended solids, boded addable organics, and bacteria can be removed or degraded by normal waste water treatment processes, but co lour, the inorganic salts or magnesium, sodium, and calcium, synthetic organics like pesticides, and other taxi substance similar to those by desalination.  

Water Treatment Processes
Water treatment plant: one of the great achievements of modern technology has been to drastically reduces the incidence of water borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever these diseases are no longer the great risks to public health that they once were.  
    Today’s water treatment plans are designed to provide water continuously that meets drinking water standards at the top there are four main consideration involved in accomplishing this:
·                 source selection
·                 protection of water quality
·                 treatment methods to be used
·                 prevention of re-contamination
Common precaution to prevent ground water and surface water pollution include.
·                 Prohibiting the discharge of sanitary and storm sewers close to the water reservoir.
·                 Installing fences to prevent pollution from recreational uses of water
·                 Restriction on the application of fertilizers and pesticides in areas that drain to the reservoir.

Screening, Coagulation / Flocculation,
Sedimentation, filtration, and disinfection are the main unit operations involved in the treatment of surface water.
Water treatment operation fulfills one or more of three key tasks:
·                 Removal of particulate substance such as send and clay, organic matter, bacterial and algae.
·                 Removal of dissolved substances such as those causing co lour and hardness.
·                 Removal of destruction of pathogenic bacteria and viruses. The actual selection of treatment processes depends on the type of water source and the desired water quality.

In a former, water flows by gravity through intake structure and pipe, screens remove larger items, such as fish sticks, and leaves, and low -lift pumps raise incoming water to the level of the treatment plant. From this point on, water moves through the plant by gravity. Occasionally raw water with low turbidity can be plain sedimentation to remove larger par tickles and then filtration to remove the few prentices that failed to settle out. Usually, however, particles in the raw water are two small to be removed in a reasonably and simple filtration alone to remedy this a chemical is added to coagulate / flocculate the small particles, called Colloids, into larger ones, which can then be settled out in sedimentation tanks or removed directly in filters where sedimentation proceeds filtration, filters can operate for longer periods, or at higher rates before they have to be backwashed.  Filtration of chemically coagulated /flocculate water with no prior sedimentation (called direct filtration) is effective for water with low to moderate turbidity and is in fact the practice in many of the newer water treatment plants. Following filtration and before it flows into the storage reservoir, the water is disinfected; usually with chlorine fluoride may also be added because of its ability to retard tooth decay. Treated water is then pumped by the high-lit pumps into the distribution system to serve customers and to maintain water levels in storage reservoirs if required. It is impotent to recognize that water treatment still remains some what of an at despite many scientific advances in understanding the physical and chemical principles involved. 

Removal of Particulate Matter
The unit operations employed for the removal of particulate matter for water include: screening, sedimentation, coagulation, flocculation, and filtration.

Figure 1: schematic of water treatment plant using surface water source

Screening: to remove large solids such as logs, branches, rags, and small fish is the first stage in the treatment of water. Water intake is located below the surface of the lake to exclude floating object and minimize physical damage from lce.

Sedimentation: the oldest and most widely used form of water and waste water treatment, uses gravity settling to remove particles from water. It is relatively simple and inexpensive and can be implemented in basin that are round, square, or rectangular- water containing particulate matter flows slowly through a sedimentation tank and is thus detained long enough for tank over a weir at the outlet end. 

Coagulation/ flocculation: is a chemical physical predate where by particles too small for practical removal by clustered together for faster settling.       

Coagulation: is a chemical process used to destabilize colloidal particles. The exact mechanism is not well understood, but the general idea is to add a chemical that provides positively charged ions to water containing negatively charged colloids. 

Removal of Dissolved Substance: several of the unit operations discussed so far is partially effective in removing objection able dissolved substances. For example, co lour in water caused by coagulation flocculation. If these are a problem, several other unit operations are available: 

Aeration: is used to remove excessive amounts of iron and manganese from ground water. These substance cause taste   and co lour problems, inter fare with laundering, stain plumbing fixtures, and promote the growth of iron bacteria in water mains. 

Softening of water: is a process that removes hardness, caused by the presence of divalent metallic irons, principally Ca+2   and Mg+2. Hardness, in water is the result of contact with soil and rock, particularly limestone, in the presence of CO2.

Activated Carbon: is an extremely adsorbent material used in water treatment to remove organic contaminants.

Reverse Osmosis (RO), fresh water is forced through a semi permeable membrane in the direction opposite to the occurring in natural Osmosis. Because the membrane removes dissolved salts, the main application for Ro has been in desalination.
                           
Storage
Storage:  is necessary in any municipal water supply system to meet variable demand, to provide fire protection, and for emergency needs.

Types of Water Storage
·        Equalizing storage: also called operating storage, is used to meet variable water demands while maintaining adequate pressure on the system.
·        Fire Storage:   is calculated by taking the product of fire flow and fire duration. Fire flow duration times suggested by the national fire protection Association (NFPA).
·        Emergency storage: of up to five time the maximum daily demand is suggested by the insurance Advisory  Organization, to provide water during shutdowns for maintenance or repaint to the system.
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