Spartan Environmental Technologies principal business is supplying ozone water treatment systems. We numerous inquiries where the customer does not have a thorough understanding of their water quality. For the design of any type of water treatment system, the starting point is a good understanding of water quality, its potential vairations and the treatment objective.
A first step is the collection of represntative water samples that correspond to various periods of operation. Such an analysis should include pH, alkalinity, TDS, TSS, inorganics (anions/cations), specific metals and organics (TOC, color, BOD and COD). If disinfection is a key objective an analysis of micro organisms should be included.
Depending on the water source to be tested, seasonal variations might be important, e.g. for surface water treatment. If such variations occur, water quality sampling should be done in different seasons to corrspond to these variations.
Treatment objectives include removal of which contaminants and to what levels. In many industrial applications COD reduction is a key objective. In drinking water and bottled water applications disinfection is the key objective. The identification of what test will be used to measure the key parameter.
A water treatment company can use the water quality data and treatment objective to make an initial assessment into the application of various technologies. In the case of Spartan, this means ozone, peroxide or advanced oxidation systems using ozone/peroxide.
If the initial assessment indicates that teh chosen technology appears to be a feasible option, lab and pilot testing are usually indicated. For ozone a basic ozone demand test is often a first step. In this test ozone is added to a water sample and the decay of the ozone over time is measured. Pilot testing is on a slightly larger scale and often involves continuous flow of water to be treated through key unit operations. For ozone systems this would invlove all of the steps in ozone generation, ozone water mixing, the inclusion of key down stream unit operations, e.g. filtration, and the necessary instruments and testing procedures to determine of the treatment objective is being met.
A competent water treatment company will not begin to discuss water treatment system costs without at least a through discussion of water quality and treatment objectives.