Water Treatment Trends

Producing clean water will probably be an expanding and continuing field of research from now on....as pollution intrudes on every clean water source that exists, and the need for clean water continues to grow, even desperately in a lot of cases, this is a field that will continue to grow into the foreseeable future....I think it needs it's own separate Federal authority...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Water_Act

I agree with most of your comment. I am skeptical about introducing a Federal Authority at this point to with a brief to oversee or regulate research. Government tends to be slow and bureaucratic, trying to impose standards against which their own performance can be measured. This inevitably stifles research and innovation and would put US firms at a disadvantage to firms in other countries where regulation is not imposed. A US Authority to investigate pollution and impose sanctions on polluters already exists, the teeth of that Authority should be sharpened.

Well the EPA already exists, which I think is in charge of water quality, but I think this field is growing in importance and scope and a water czar with a separate larger organization is called for imo....The pollution methods are becoming more diverse such as drugs and other persistent types of biological waste need to be studied as to what effects can be mitigated by what most efficient means....Toxin producing Blue-green algae's are becoming more prevalent and intrusive and disruptive and dangerous....Water shortage situations are looming larger everyday.....rising seas and the intrusion into fresh water resources is a growing concern....Clean water, nutritious food and comfortable safe shelter are basic to quality of life, and I think should be given priority...

Their teeth are already plenty sharp and getting sharper with use, trust me.

The last thing any industry needs right now is more government morons screwing up the works. What is needed is a government that will fund large projects to provide usable water all over the country, improve water re-use, and to also simultaneously take off the blinders and stop walking down only one narrow path in order to find the most "sustainable", non-polluting technologies with very high water recovery rates.

For example, I know someone who is working with a system of water recovery (for process re-use) that removes a quite high percentage of the solids dissolved in water, is economical to operate, only produces solids that actually have a market as minerals, and requires non of the trendy RO membranes, ion exchange equipment, etc. The only high-tech part of it is analysis of the water, and very tight control of the chemistry. There will be a literal explosion of this technology in the not too distant future, and you can quote me on it.

Personally I always have a hard time following how we will run out of water and energy to process it while living on a planet that has more water than land area and energy of all forms overflowing from most every natural process we can name.

Methinks some short sighted and rather ignorant politicians are the real problems behind water shortages.

"For fossil aquifers-such as the vast U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer-depletion brings pumping to an end. Farmers who lose their irrigation water have the option of returning to lower-yield dry land farming if rainfall permits. In more arid regions, however, such as in the southwestern United States or the Middle East, the loss of irrigation water means the end of agriculture."

http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/150159/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer

"About 27 percent of the irrigated land in the United States overlies the aquifer, which yields about 30 percent of the ground water used for irrigation in the United States. Since 1950, agricultural irrigation has reduced the saturated volume of the aquifer by an estimated 9%. Depletion is accelerating, with 2% lost between 2001 and 2009^{[2][not in citation given]} alone. Certain aquifer zones are now empty;^[3] these areas will take over 6,000 years to replenish naturally through rainfall.^[4]"

"In ten years, the Colorado River Basin has lost the equivalent of two Lake Meads, the largest reservoir in the U.S., pictured here at dusk with Las Vegas in the background."

..."Aquifers in the Colorado River Basin and the southern Great Plains also suffer severe depletion. Studies show that about half the groundwater depletion nationwide is from irrigation. Agriculture is the leading use of water in the U.S. and around the world, and globally irrigated farming takes more than 60 percent of the available freshwater."...
..."A new satellite study from the University of California, Irvine and NASA indicates that the Colorado River Basin lost 65 cubic kilometers (15.6 cubic miles) of water from 2004 to 2013."...

The water grows the crops that feed the animals that feed the people....
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140819-groundwater-california-drought-aquifers-hidden-crisis/

Some of the water shortage is due to large corporations depleting natural flows of good quality water to supply large bottled water plants, heavy industrial and power consumption of water with little or no convervation measures in place. Part of the problem, I hate to admit, is government (EPA) regulation of where every drop of waste water has to flow according to rigid permitting.

Example: Denver CO lies approximately one mile (5280 ft) elevation, and the waste water treatment plant has to deal with all the wastewater from this large city. All of the discharged treated final effluent is routed to the Platte River, as part of the permit requirements (source from Denver wastewater treatment plant personnel is confidential). How I learned this may be of interest. I live (obviously) in Lubbock, Texas where the aquifer is somewhat depleted due to agriculture, and the Lake Meredith supply we used to rely upon is largely depleted well below full pool, and now we rely on well fields far north of our city, and a smaller lake to the southeast (and lower elevation than our 3300 ft.

I had called up the Denver people proposing that if a project were built to conduit wastewater (treated final) to the northwest part of Texas, wherein hydroelectic power was generated per 700 ft change in elevation, if the water could be sourced, and I got the "no" answer. That's too bad, but I am sure Omaha would like to keep drinking all that Denver has to offer.

My village has a deep well that until recently, and according to the EPA, was "fit to drink". Suddenly it was discovered that there are high levels of vinyl chloride. Remediation involved "Air Stripping".

With the election of a new local government, there was a push to tie into the municipal water system who's source is lake Michigan.

There are land fills that have developed in the past few years but supposedly any groundwater plumes would not infiltrate the aquifer that is a source for the village well.

This would seem to indicate that the integrity of the well casing has been compromised.

I hope this is not an example of what to expect for wells in the future.

http://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/factsheets/vinyl-chloride.htm

http://inspectapedia.com/water/Well_Casing_Leaks.htm

http://www.frtr.gov/matrix2/section4/4-46.html

It seems you're not alone....

http://host.madison.com/news/local/with-shrinking-aquifer-in-poor-shape-waukesha-yearns-for-lake/article_ff4400cf-d60a-5c1c-ba81-5d00180e4a73.html

This could in fact be in the groundwater.....If it is a bad casing, it certainly would be worth finding out for sure and repairing it....In any case the article above is a good look at what is happening, or beginning to happen, everywhere....less water available, more concentration of pollutants....people fighting over access....

Solar,

Thank you for the comprehensive information which I have added to a growing list.

On the subject of air stripping remediation, I can find no detail on two issues produced by this process. First, how is the vinyl chloride that is removed from the water handled? I ask this because at the beginning of the stripping process there was a definite odor of vinyl chloride depending on wind direction. Second, what measures are taken to filter the intake air involved?

In some instances of air stripping, no further treatment is required (as to the air), but in some, and I suspect your case, some form of catalytic thermal destruction of the vinyl chloride would probably be a good, but somewhat costly idea.