World Water Day Series #2 - Nuisance Contaminants? Iron and Manganese in Your Water

By Chad Miller, Project Manager

Welcome to our blog series in honor of World Water Day on Friday, March 22^nd! The United Nations declared 2013 as the “International Year of Water Cooperation.” The employees at AdEdge have a passion for clean water and providing safe drinking water for people throughout the world. Over the next week and half, we will be exploring some of the ways AdEdge is making a difference in helping the global water crisis.

Groundwater throughout the world is plagued with high levels of naturally occurring metals.  Most often we find iron and manganese present in groundwater.  While these elements have little health risk, they are not easily overlooked by residents in the community with iron and manganese attributing to orange and black stains in toilets, sinks, and all water appliances of the home.  You also have most communities with industries, which uses equipment in contact with water that builds up with iron and manganese scale resulting in a loss of productivity.

   

Everyday people can see the trouble of iron and manganese if they, but they do not see these same problems occurring on a much larger scale in community water lines and pumps.   Just recently a utility director explained to me that an 8-inch water main is reduced to 2-inches in diameter due to scale build-up.  He combats this by adding sequestering chemicals and flushing his hydrants monthly to blow out the scale.  Who wants to have their streets flooded by the city when there is a water shortage?  If nothing else it’s bad PR. 

Filtering the iron and manganese prevents iron and manganese from building up scale in the water lines -- this is nothing new.  But, with the advent of H2Zero Backwash Recycle System – AdEdge does not generate a wastewater stream in the filtration process.  And you can forget about the requesting chemicals that are known to proliferate algae growth in lakes and streams.   It’s a win – win!