Ozone in Water Treatment
Because ozone has excellent disinfection and oxidation properties, it is widely used in various water treatment applications that require a highly efficient and ecologically friendly water treatment method.
Ozone is by far the most effective disinfection agent for completely removing contaminants, toxins and many other substances in many water treatment applications.
Ozone can be added at different points throughout the water treatment system – during pre-oxidation, intermediate oxidation or at the final disinfection. When used for pre-oxidation, just before passing the water through a sand filter or granular activated carbon filter (GAC), the filters can remove the already oxidized residual organic matter, and metals, leaving the water odorless, clean and pure.
While chemical treatment (such as Chlorination) may equally disinfect, there is always the downstream concentration of these chemicals and their disinfection byproducts that remain a problem. Ozone, on the other hand, leaves no chemical residue. It is a gas comprised of three oxygen atoms that after acting as an oxidizing agent, reverts back to pure clean oxygen.
The use of ozone prior to bio filtration as the primary disinfectant leads to a more complete disinfection and a lower disinfectant concentration.
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Removal of matter
Ozone is an extremely strong oxidizing agent and acts much quicker than chlorine and any other chemical agent in eliminating inorganic matter. Both surface water and ground water tend to contain micro-pollutants like pesticides that ozone effectively eliminates by oxidation.
Ozone is however less potent in mineralization of natural organic matter (NOM) which is normally present in all water sources. Yet natural organic matter must be removed first in water treatment particularly to produce pure drinking water. Natural organic matter is what creates direct problems like odor and taste in water, plus indirect problems such as bacterial regrowth in water distribution systems and formation of organic disinfection byproducts.
Ozonation however, partly oxidizes organic matter making it more easily biodegradable. This way, ozone improves the process of removing natural organic matter when it is used as a pre-oxidant. Bio filtration may then follow ozonation to achieve complete removal of inorganic matter since oxidation forms insoluble compounds that need to be eliminated during subsequent steps in the water purification process.
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Achieving better disinfection
Water treatment with a chemical disinfectant initiates a reaction between organic material and the disinfectant thus creating disinfection byproducts (DBP) in the process. Using chorine as the disinfectant leads to the formation of chlorinated organic DBPs such as trihalomethanes (THM). Using ozone on the other hand leads to organic DBPs like ketones and aldehydes which are easily degraded (up to 100 percent) in a biofilter. This way, the use of ozone as the disinfectant creates safer disinfection byproducts that do not present any risk of noncompliance to drinking water standards.
Where chlorine is used as the disinfectant, prior ozonation is recommended for pre-oxidation to reduce the amount of disinfection byproducts in the conventional disinfection system.
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Removal of odor and taste
Inorganic compounds such as iron and manganese; and natural organic matter, can form compounds that create odor and taste in water.
Most of these odor and taste forming compounds tend to be very resistant, making their elimination to be a very intensive process. While several processes such as oxidation, granular active carbon (GAC) filtration, aeration or sand filtration can be individually appropriate for the elimination of taste and odor, a combination of these techniques normally provide the best results.
Like in the case of disinfection (above), pre-oxidation using ozone; followed by activated carbon (GAC) filtration, improves the purity and overall quality of the filtered water.
At Integra Water Technologies, we design, manufacture, the finest ozone water treatment systems with components that interface with each other to achieve optimum performance in water treatment.
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