You might look for chemical supply houses in your area. I don't know if VWR Scientific, for instance, serves your region. Or maybe Edmund Scientific?

Try alum. Alum is the name used for aluminum sulfate, chemical formula Al2(SO4)3. Frankly I prefer polymer types, but given your third world application, Alum works and no silly iron stains. or high iron ppm in the water. Here's a primer. http://www.southshoregunitepools.com/resources/pdfs/how_alum_works.pdf milo

Dear Rusty,

Know nothing about flocking material. Know more about about obtaining safe drinking water than any person in the world! Would like to have speaks with you. No sales DaS is into charity work, especialy the supply of drinking water at no costs.

Cheers

Peter

I am listening.

I have seen an online comparison of alum and iron sulfate. There is an alum manufacturer about 3 miles from my home. The Iron sulfate appears to work quicker and do a cleaner job. I am not particularly concerned with iron stain as the water being floced may be brown as mud anyway.

Check-out your local garden centre or ask the groundsman at the nearest golf course. Sulphate of iron is generally used as a MOSS KILLER and should be on the internet from GEM or one of the other garden chemical suppliers.

It appears that you have already made up your mind as to what you are going to use which is unfortunate as Mr. S. Udhayamarthandan has given you some pretty darn good advice. Perk it through a slow sand filter first, gravity fed with no moving parts, and then Chlorination to kill whatever the sand filter doesn't get. The sand filter will take out all of the solids and give you CLEAR WATER in the CLEARWELL. You say you are working in a third world country so you need to keep this thing as simple as you can. My experience has been that sometimes the guy running the water plant figures if 50 pounds of floculant is good in one dose then the whole 100 pound sack is better and he doesn't have to do any work the second time around. I used alum in the plants that I managed in the States as alum takes out the IRON which gives the water a bad color and stains everything it comes in contact with including laundry and cement walls.

Which type of alum did you use in the water plant? Do you have any experience with ferrous sulfate?

Yes, alum is good. Make sure you use ferric iron (Fe3+) and not ferrous iron (Fe2+) Ferric is orange (ferric chloride, ferric sulfate). Lime (calcium hydroxide) is also useful. It is used for agricultural purposes. Magnesium salts(magnesium hydroxide, Magnasol, mag chloride, etc) also work if available in your area.

Thank you so much. This is the kind of information I am looking for. I would not want to use the wrong compound. You do seem to be well informed. I would like to talk to you more in the very near future. I am located in Rockwell, NC and I can get almost anything here. As I mentioned my work abroad is in third world. In the past I have done well drilling, hand pump repair, set up filtration systems, set up sodium hypochlorite production units and a little more. By small quantities of floc I am talking about in some cases a bucket full at a time. I have resourses and knowledge to prepackage a good floc for such. In many third world countries the water sources are so bad that without flocing first sand filters or for that matter any kind of filtration is so hard on the filter media that it will quickly clog and the locals would abandon the project. I have seen good almost clear water full of amoebic cysts. I have seen muddy water full of fecal matter from the runnoff during the rains that come frequently. So in the third world there is no easy answer but only to releive some of the problems in certain circumstances. Many places have access to water but not good quality water. After several years of work and research really I am trying to find good repeatable solutions to problems that are very quite common in the very poor areas of Africa in particular. Many people are drinking from mud holes and with a little help the quality of water and life can be improved. Last year I set up some sodium hypochlorite production units in Kenya and Ethiopia. Make you own bleach! Yes this is working and will continue. Some water is so turbid that it first needs to be floced. Thus the research of a good flocing material. Something that can be added to a 10 liter bucket and be stirred to coagulate the clay, fecal matter and the other sludge that has been picked up from its many miles past pastures, industries and other. Many times such as the Nile all of this stuff has been dumped or through runoff been caught up in the "River Of Life" over several thousand miles. People are drinking all of this stuff. So simple flocing and or filtration/chlorination can produce safe drinking water. Again why floc? Remove stuff that will clog filters or inhibit simple chlorination. The more organic matter in the water the quicker filters will clog. The more organic matter the harder the chlorine will have to work simply put. As far as other contaminates such as chemicals activated carbon will retain many. Is there a perfect solution that is both affordable and simple enough for the impoverished? Really I dont have it yet but am working toward it. Some have hobbies some have goals and those such as I have passions. My passion is to find the right answer for the given situation. At any minute you may ask me what are you thinking about and I will most likely answer, my grand kids or drinking water for the world. It is my calling to find answers to huge questions. Thanks to all at CR4 and their help.

Rusty, You probably ought to connect with agua_doc http://cr4.globalspec.com/member?u=3662 FYI. milo

Hello Milo, I tried the link to Aqua doc with no sucess. Please have him contact me.

thanks

rustyh2o

Greetings to Vagabond my friend. I think we meet first instance here in CR4. Thank you for the support views. Here in India, waste water treatment is a much challenging deed to convince people to implement. As a strategic green volunteer I got used to suggest low cost treatment solutions.Still people keep counting on .000... cent/ litre costings.

If we are really civilized, we must use water judicially, avoid ground and surface water contamination and treat it after use for safer level of discharges- a major moral responsibility.

The simplest treatment solution in many such cases is ,allowing the water at rest in clarifier's, clear out sediments and think of end use. Due provisions are to be made to ensure this atleast.

Regards and see you again.

Go for iron sulphate instead of aluminium sulphate.... there are rumours linking Al to Alzheimers. I recommend ozone for disinfection and this will also get rid of the iron and you avoid trihalomethanes (depending what source water you are using)