Water Treatment

Since you're using it for food manufacture, the most important factor would be that your water does not contain pathogens or toxic chemicals. What sort of dissolved solids are there in your water? Assuming that there's nothing toxic in it, your basic process flow will go something like this: Multimedia filtration, then activated carbon filtration, then pH adjustment, then disinfection, before being stored prior to use. If the water contains anything toxic such as arsenic or lead, then obviously it must be removed first before the water can be used for food manufacture.

Note that UV-disinfection has no residual effect, so if you choose this method to disinfect your water, you'll need to disinfect it again if you're not going to use it immediately. The advantage of using it for the food industry though is that since nothing dissolves in the water, it will have no adverse impact on the taste of the food.

Depending on the final water quality needs which is determined by the quality specs of the final product it may be a good idea to drop an RO in just before the sterizilation step. Most RO's even cheap ones will reject 95% of the Disolved solids including heavy metals and bacteria, higher quality RO membranes are in th 98% or better range and can operate at higher pressures and volumes.

Now if you want to be sure that the water does not effect the taste of your final product install a couple ion exchange mixbeds after the RO's and create the fabulous and very versitle DI water. Companies like Snappel beverage companies use DI water exsclusively in their products.

Food for thought

recheck the raw water again.4.2 pH is of acid.Raw Water is getting contaminated.

Sir,
Low pH means Contamination?

Or A pH restoration with alkali Dosing can Work out the things?

That will depend on what is causing the low pH. If it's due to peat or nitrates, then biological treatment to dentrify the nitrates and remove the organic acids would be better. If it's mineral acids, better get them analyzed first in case they're toxic. If they're non-toxic, then adjusting the pH will work.

Sir,
I'm attaching the Analysis report Itself for your perusal.

Awaiting Your comments

Something wrong with the analysis-

Showing the pH you reported, 4.2 but also showing something like 10 mg/l of alkalinity. These two values do nor correspond.

CO2 is very high relative to the overall analysis. See previous.

silica is quite high. This is a rather strange water supply, but the analysis is definitely flawed.

I tend too agree with flynn that the accuracy of the analysis is in question BUT we also do not know where the water is being drawn from. Water from a well in the midwest will not have the same properties as water drawn from a well located on a Hawian island.

Seeing as how the OP is in the food industry working with a food that is very pH sensitive I would assume that he has a calibrated pH meter somewhere in the plant. So my first recommendation is to test the pH of the water in-house and see if the readings match. Or try drawing two more samples for testing, send one to the original lab and the second independent lab. Compare the results then move forward with your water filtration system.

Another option depending on where you live (which is almost anywhere in the world) you can contact companies like Siemens Water Technologies. As part of a pre-sales work-up they will do a fairly comprehensive test of the water for free and present the results.

What's the source of this water? Is it groundwater near a hot spring? The sulphur content looks a little high. Does the water any kind of sulphurous odor? If so, you'll need to remove it with lime first to prevent your tomato ketchup from having an unpleasant sulphur stench. This will also help to raise the pH. Bubbling CO₂ through the pH adjusted water will then balance the pH to about 7.0 by precipitating out the excess calcium.

Sir,

The Source of water is a Bore well In Nigeria.

As it is clear from Analysis Report all the Composition is quite weird.

May be any one from Ikeja Lagos Nigeria can confirm this or not.

Thanks

Hello VIPIN, dt;13/02/2009

To use for tomato paste manufacture, is there any norms on input water characteristicrs? I have my own doubts based on TDS,EDTA hardness values, the bore well water of such normalcies can not be acidic to a level of 4.2. You are requested to recheck pH for true estimation.If pH is normal for continuous drawn bore well water. the raw water without any filter can be used directly.Since food grade water is required ,a UV radiation can protect any bacterial contaminations,which has to checked for presence.On the other hand you are requested to confirm any contamination of toxic minerals/organics in the bore well raw water.If pH is neutral you may go ahead without filters and verify your product in a food products testing lab.give me feed back.regards.

S.Udhayamarthandan,Ankha Kaizen Technologies

sumarthandan@gmail.com

Contact these folks: http://www.kochmembrane.com/mktapp_fdb.html

They'll design the system for you, build it on skids, and install it on your site.

4000l/d isn't a lot. Why not start with the public supply instead?

The settleable solids need to come out of the borehole water first, perhaps with depth cartridge filters or more likely a multi-media filter vessel. Some sort of backwash facility is required, and maybe a second stream to maintain flow to service during backwash (it all depends upon whether the process is continuous or not)? The TDS and low pH could be corrected using a vessel filled with highly-fractured calcium carbonate crystals. Maybe a fine filter after that to remove any calcium carbonate, then a finer filter or UV lamp to remove or de-activate any germs or viruses. Then what? There's a need to provide clean pipework and a method of cleaning it. There's a need to stop biology going rampant downstream of the UV lamp, which may be by putting it in a sterile loop as is done in pharmaceutical and semiconductor manufacture.

Er, this is one where some serious discussions with a specialist water supplier might prove interesting. Try Lubron (usual disclaimer).

For sterilization of the piping periodic ozone injection works great.