‘Green’ Approaches to Water Gaining Ground Around World

By Stephen Leahy

To Keep Water Coming Out of the Spout, You Must Keep Air in the Storage Tank

by Gene Franks,  Pure Water Products

The undersink reverse osmosis tank stores water then pushes it out of the faucet upon demand.  What pushes the water out is air.  For the tank to deliver water, you have to keep air in it. If air pressure in the tank gets low, only part of the water will come out of the tank.  Like auto tires, RO tanks lose air over time.  When the air pressure in the tank gets really low, no water at all will come out of the faucet.

An airless tank is easy to recognize:  You open the faucet to fill  your teapot and what comes out is about half a cupful of water, then nothing but a tiny stream or a drip.

If this happens, try to pick up the tank. If it is very heavy, that means that the tank is full of water but there is no air charge to push it out.  (If the tank is very light, it means that the tank isn’t the problem and you’ll have to look elsewhere to fix it.)

 

If the tank needs air–and this is the most common cause of low water output–here’s how you fix it.

The tools you’ll need are two:  A standard bicycle pump and a low pressure air  gauge. The gauge isn’t essential, but it will help you do the job right.  The gauge needs to read accurately at pressure levels under 10 psi.  The gauge you use on your automobile tires is not accurate enough at low pressures.

To start,  turn off the inlet valve to the unit.  Then, open the RO unit’s faucet and leave it open during the entire procedure. Let all the water run out of the tank.

When no water is coming out of the faucet,  pick up the storage tank. If it is empty, very light, the faucet isn’t the issue.

If the tank still has water in it — and this is usually the case — attach a bicycle pump to the air valve on the tank. (It’s on top of some tanks, on the bottom of others, and sometimes on the side.. You’ll have look for it. It usually has a cap on the valve stem that you’ll have to remove.)

With the faucet still open, pump air slowly into the tank. Water will start to leave the tank through the open ledge faucet. Continue to pump air into the tank slowly and steadily until all water is out of it.  When the tank is empty and no more water is coming out of the tank, you’re finished except for adjusting the air pressure in the tank.

Try to leave about 7 pounds of pressure in the empty tank. It doesn’t have to be exact, but resist the impulse to leave lots of pressure.  If you leave over 10 psi or so in the tank,  you don’t gain pressure, you just lose water capacity.

After you’ve aired the tank, close the faucet, open the inlet valve, and let the RO unit begin filling the tank.  Since the tank is empty, it will take a couple of hours to get a full tank of water, but you can get a glassful in ten minutes.  It’s OK to start using the tank at any time.

For more information about reverse osmosis maintenance, go to Pure Water Products website.

The Meaning of the pH of Water.  Another Installment in Pure Water Annie’s Water

Treatment 101 Series.

The term pH is used to describe the activity of the hydrogen ion in a solution. It measures the relative acidity and alkalinity of the solution. It is not a measure of quantity but of the relationship between acidity and alkalinity.

The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14, with a value of 7 considered neutral. Pure water is considered to be neutral, pH 7.0, although most water ranges between 6.0 and 8.0 on the scale. Values above 7.0 are considered alkaline and below 7.0 acidic.

The pH value of water decreases as the amount of carbon dioxide, CO2, increases, and pH increases as the amount of bicarbonate alkalinity increases. The ratio of carbon dioxide and bicarbonate alkalinity within the ranges of 3.6 to 8.4 is an indication of the pH value of the water.

The pH of water figures into almost all aspects of water treatment. The reduction of such contaminants as iron, manganese, arsenic, fluoride, and hydrogen sulfide is highly dependent on the pH of water.  Water that is low in pH is corrosive and must be corrected. Even disinfection of water with chlorine is highly dependent on pH.

As far as health is concerned, there is no evidence to support claims by sellers of pH amending machines that only highly alkaline water is suitable for drinking.

pH Adjustment in Water

The pH can be raisedby feeding soda ash (sodium carbonate), caustic soda (sodium hydroxide), sodium

bicarbonate, or potassium hydroxide into the water. Calcite (calcium carbonate, CaCO3) and/or Corosex (MgO—magnesium oxide) are used as filters to increase pH from the 5 and 6 range. The peak flow of neutralizing filters is limited to about 6 gpm per square foot of medium. Downflow filters must be backwashed frequently to prevent “cementing” of the bed. Upflow filters do not experience cementing of the bed, but they do not work if iron is present in the water.

Lowering pH is less frequently done, but can be accomplished by feeding a variety of acids with a standard metering pump. Both sulfuric and hydrochloric acids will work, but weaker acids are usually preferred. The most commonly used are phosphoric acid (H3PO4), acetic acid (CH3COOH), and citric acid (C6H8O7). Vinegar can also be injected to lower pH.

 Nestle’s Water Sales in China Increased 27% in 2012

Research from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Ministry of Environmental Protection has shown that 320 million rural people in China still do not have access to safe drinking water, with 190 million using drinking water that contains excessive levels of hazardous substances.

In Beijing, while officials insist upon the safety of the water supply, residents are skeptical  and for this reason bottled water sales are reaching record highs.

In 2001, bottled water sales totaled $1 billion in China; in 2012, the total was $9 billion; and, in 2013 one research group predicts that bottled water sales will jump to $16 billion.

Bottled water giant Nestle seems to be the main benefactor of China’s water problems.  China is Nestle’s eighth largest market worldwide, and Nestle’s water business in China increased by 27 percent in 2012.

More information.

 

Marine Base’s Water Contamination That Caused Male and Female Breast Cancer and Leukemia Goes Back to at least 1953

President Barack Obama signed a law last year granting health care and screening to Marines and their dependents on the Camp Lejeune marine base between 1957 and 1987.  A new government study shows that  drinking water in the residential Hadnot Point area of the base was unsafe for human consumption as far back as 1953. According to a Marine spokesman, the extension of the time line will add between 33,000 and 53,000 to the number of people who lived at the base when the water was contaminated.

Contamination resulted from years of leaking fuel tanks, which estimates now show leaked at least a million gallons of fuel, and to a lesser degree from an off-base dry cleaning establishment.

According to the Washington Post, “The Marines were slow to react after groundwater sampling first showed contamination on the base in the early 1980s. Some drinking water wells were closed in 1984 and 1985, after further testing confirmed contamination from leaking fuel tanks and an off-base dry cleaner. . . . Health officials believe as many as 1 million people may have been exposed to tainted water.” 

It is believed now that the base’s water supply was contaminated with VOCs (volatile organic compounds) at least as early as 1953.  

The fifteen health conditions singled out in the 2012 law that veterans and family members who served on active duty or resided at Camp Lejeune for 30 days or more during the 24 year can make VA medical care claims for are

Esophageal cancer

Breast cancer

Kidney cancer

Multiple myeloma

Renal toxicity

Female infertility

Scleroderma

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma 

Lung cancer

Bladder cancer

Leukemia

Myelodysplastic syndromes

Hepatic steatosis

Miscarriage

Neurobehavioral effects.

 

Full story from the Washington Post

  The High Cost of Nuclear Energy

by Hardly Waite

In the early 1950s  a small nuclear testing facility called the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory was set up near the Mohwawk River in New York to be used for research involving nuclear weaponry.  The plant operated for less than three years, closing in 1953. Its purpose was to find methods for  recovering uranium and plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.

In December 2007, DOE awarded a $69 million cleanup contract to Washington Group International of Oak Ridge, Tenn. Work began in September 2008. In April 2009, the federal government announced a $32 million stimulus grant to help pay for the cleanup.

The cleanup is still in progress, and last month (Dec. 2012)  hundreds of gallons of radioactive water spilled from a drainage pipe into the Mohawk River. A failed sump pump system caused tainted water — containing Cesium-137, Strontium-90, uranium and plutonium — to overflow into a culvert draining directly into the river.

Although officials in charge of the cleanup  said the spill did not present any immediate threat to public health, the elements in the spill are known carcinogens.

The issue is probably not so much that several hundred gallons of carcinogen-contaminated water were dumped into the Mohawk River so much as the bleak prospect of continuing to create virtually eternal wastes that are “cleaned up” by simply moving them from one temporary disposal site to another.

The more nuclear waste we create, the more our water supplies will suffer.

More information from the Times Union.

Phoenix’s Lake Pleasant Solar Powered Water Treatment Plant To Produce 15 Billion Gallons of Water Per Year

Phoenix’s new Lake Pleasant Water Treatment Plant will use the power of the sun to produce 15 billion gallons of tap water per year.  The highly efficient solar system that powers it is expected to generate 70 percent of the the plant’s total power needs. Compared with conventional electricity, it will save the city $4.2 million in power costs over the next 20 years.

According to estimates provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the system is expected to offset the production of more than 9,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is equivalent to removing almost 35,800 cars from Arizona’s roads over the next 20 years.

Phoenix is the logical place for a solar application, with 300 days of sunshine per year.

 

 Information about other successful solar power systems.

 

The Advantages of Being Ordinary: Why Standard Sized Water Filters Are Best

Things get to be standard for a reason. — Latvian Proverb.

If you own one of the many popular drinking water systems that use uniquely sized replacement filters–Aquasana, Brita, and Pur, for example–the total number of replacement cartridges you have to choose from are one. 

That’s because the manufacturer has made the filter so that it will accept only one cartridge size–the size that the manufacturer alone makes. This practice is known in the industry as proprietary sizing. The purpose is to assure the maker that you can buy only his cartridges. It also relieves the maker of the need to provide variety. One-size-only normally also means one-style-only. Whether your water is disinfected  with chloramines, chlorine, or nothing at all, you get the same filter cartridge. If your water has lead or no lead, fluoride or no fluoride, it’s the same cartridge.

If, on the other hand, you own a drinking water system that uses a standard 9.75″ X 2.5″ filter cartridge, you can choose from literally dozens of different cartridge styles, and you can even buy a cartridge from a manufacturer other than the one who made the filtration system. This size, which we call Size 1 for convenience, is the most commonly made filter size. Almost anyone who makes water filters makes some cartridges in this size.

Below are some examples of standard-sized cartridges that will fit all standard-sized filtration units, countertop filters, undersink filters, reverse osmosis units, add-on filters, and even garden hose filters.

For an idea of the cartridge choices you get when you stick with a standard size, take a look at the cartridge offerings in 9.75  X 2.5 on this site:

Standard cartridges come in two general styles–radial and axial.  These can be interchanged.  In other words, if you purchase a water filter with a standard sized axial cartridge, you can replace it with a radial cartridge. The pictures below will explain.

The standard filter  shown above is a  “radial style” cartridge.  This means that water to be filtered passes through the outside wall of the filter cartridge and works its way into the core. The cartridge, therefore, has a very large filtering surface.

There are also many “axial style” cartridges that fit in standard housings as well. These interchange with radial filters and no modification of the housing is needed. Axials work differently. Rather than flowing through the side of the cartridge to the center, with axials water enters one end of the cartridge and flows the entire length of the cartridge to exit the other end. Cartridges of this type are often called “media” cartridges, since they use granular filter media. Most specialty cartridges (fluoride, iron, nitrates, arsenic, etc.) fall in this category. Granular carbon “taste/odor” cartridges as well are almost always axials.

 

The filters shown above are all standard drinking water size. Standard sizes also exist for larger units for higher flow or “whole house” applications..  Here are the common ones:

 

Size 2:  2.5″ x 20″

Size 3: 4.5″ X 9.75″

Size 4: 4.5″ X 20″

Cartridge diameter may vary a bit. For example, Size 3 cartridges, commonly called “Big Blue” size, can run from 2.25″ to 4.5″.

 

After 15 Years of Drilling,  Russians Have Brought a 2 Meter Slab of Ancient Ice to the Surface

As we previously reported, Russian scientists have been drilling under the most difficult of conditions in an effort to reach a body of water called Lake Vostok that has been isolated from the rest of the planet for at least 20 million years. The lake lies 2.5 miles beneath the surface of Antarctica.  It is 160 miles long and 30 miles across.

Drilling through the 2.5 miles to hit the lake has been done under the most brutal of conditions in an area where temperatures have been recorded down to -129F.  Drilling was possible only during the short summer season, and has stretched out over 15 years.

In February of 2012 the drilling paid off and the lake’s surface was reach, but because of extreme care taken not to contaminate the lake’s water, it has taken until January 10, 2013 to finally extract what is believed to be a pure sample of the 20 million year old water.  The entire project has been going on for 23 years.

According to a Russian news agency, “The first core of transparent lake ice, 2 meters long, was obtained on January 10 [2013] at a depth of 3,406 meters. Inside it was a vertical channel filled with white bubble-rich ice.”

The world awaits news of the nature of Lake Vostok’s water and the secrets it might hold.  What is expected is an intense study of the physical and chemical qualities of the water ice and an investigation into whether there are signs of microbial life.

Reference:  Scientific American.

 

 

Barges Holding 10,000 Barrels of Fracking Brine May Soon Invade the Nation’s Rivers

by Hardly Waite

The plans of a Texas company called GreenHunter Water are now on hold while federal authorities investigate the wisdom of hauling tens of thousands of gallons of toxic fracking brine to Ohio’s 179 disposal wells.

The US Coast Guard is delaying the project until a decision is made on the nature of fracking waste, which environmentalists contend is a toxic material that is too dangerous to transport by river barge.

The Columbus Dispatch explains:

Barges add a new wrinkle to the flood of waste fluids washing into Ohio from the thousands of natural-gas wells drilled into Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale.

Drillers rely on fracking, a process in which millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are pumped underground to shatter the shale and free trapped gas. A similar fracking boom is under way in Ohio’s Utica shale.

Some of the fracking fluid bubbles back up, along with saltwater trapped underground for millions of years. The brine contains spent fracking chemicals, high concentrations of salt and naturally occurring metals and radium.

Millions of barrels of waste are injected back underground in Ohio disposal wells. State records show that 12.2 million barrels of fracking waste and brine were injected in the first half of 2012, 56 percent of which came from Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Before 2010 Pennsylvania brine was being dumped into streams by sewage-treatment plants.  A court decision in Pennsylvania ended the practice, and there are only a few federally regulated disposal wells in the state, so Pennsylania’s fracking brine is now being exported to Ohio for disposal.  Ohio has 179 regulated disposal wells.

 

The Dispatch continues:

Much of the brine comes in tanker trucks that can hold 80 to 150 barrels, [and] GreenHunter wants to use a tanker barge that can hold 10,000 barrels. The company’s website says the storage tanks at the New Matamoras terminal can hold as much as 70,000 barrels . . . .  One barge can haul as much as 1,050 trucks.

Environmental advocates question the safety of the practice and worry that a barge carrying brine could run into a bridge or another vessel and break apart. They point out that the Ohio River provides drinking water, and to endanger it by allowing the barge transportation of a hazardous waste is unwise.

Reference source:  The Columbus Dispatch.