WATER PURIFICATION
WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE…
Dr Patrick Marcus explains how to meet the challenges of purifying water through mobile applications
WTC 1600 GT with Double-Pass used by the German
Armed Forces operating under CBRN conditions during the disaster relief mission near Fukushima in 2011.
Water before and aſt er treatment with WTC 1600.
Submersible raw water pump in dirty raw water at a river in Brazil following a fl ood in 2009.
Images: ©Kärcher Futuretech
According to the UN and WHO (World Health Organisation) at least 1 billion people do not have access to drinking water – the prerequisite for human life – and more than 2 billion do not have access to regulated and controlled sanitation systems.
T
here is also potential for contamination in regions where rivers and lakes are already heavily polluted and where water sources for the provision of drinking water, either directly or aſt er purifi cation, are rare. More than 99% of our water resources
are either saltwater in the oceans or are bound in ice and snow caps at the poles or in glaciers (top right, page 56). Most of the remaining freshwater sources cannot be used
directly as drinking water for humans, since it oſt en contains particles, microbacteria, viruses and chemical contaminants in concentrations harmful to human health. Therefore almost everywhere even freshwater must be purifi ed.
Purifying raw water In industrialized countries raw water has to be purifi ed until
54 CBNW 2013/01
it exceeds drinking water quality standards (e.g. the US-EPA Drinking Water Regulation, EU Drinking Water Directive). Water treatment is designed to remove all harmful components, with plants designed for further adjustments to the purifi cation process.
The problem with mobile water purifi cation for worldwide
disaster relief or peacekeeping missions is that the user normally does not have the knowledge, nor the time and equipment, to analyse the raw water quality in areas of operations. Also water that would never normally be used in stationary applications for drinking water production has to be used in mobile applications – as there is no alternative. Such raw waters may be very hard – of a high calcium
carbonate concentration – or have an extremely high concentra- tion of chemical contaminants. Even worse, diff erent types of contaminants might be combined: a high particle load combined with a high concentration of microbacteria and chemical contaminants, such as aſt er a fl ood in Brazil in 2009 (above leſt ).
From source to consumption Therefore, mobile water purifi cation systems for fast and worldwide disaster relief and military applications should always be designed to deal with raw water. For re-occurring contamination the systems should be modular, with each
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