INTENSIFICATION OF IRON REMOVING OF LOW ALKALINE GROUNDWATER

Abstract

The problem of providing humanity with quality drinking water is exacerbated in the modern world. According to international organizations, a half of the world's population by 2025 will live in areas with significant water shortages. The sufficient standard of living and environmental safety is one of the citizens’ rights defined by the main law of Ukraine, which provides for the provision of quality drinking water in the required amounts and in accordance with established standards for the quality of drinking water. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved the concept of the state target social program "Drinking Water of Ukraine" for 2022-2026 for this purpose. The unsatisfactory state of water quality in Ukraine is associated with moral and physical depreciation of main resources, underfunding of water supply and sewerage industry. The situation is complicated by the lack of qualified personnel in rural areas. A large part of the inhabitants’ rural settlements use groundwater aquifers for their drinking purposes, which often contain excessive concentrations of total iron. The water treatment facilities were built according to standard designs using non-reagent methods for water iron removal in small settlements. The practice of individual treatment plants operation has shown their low efficiency, due to the unreasonable use of such methods. The improvement of existing water treatment schemes should be carried out taking into account the peculiarities of the physicochemical composition of water and the use of existing water treatment equipment. The purpose of the work is to improve the technological scheme of water iron removal and improve the quality of the filtrate. It is established that the reason for the unsatisfactory operation of treatment plants is due to the low alkalinity of groundwater. The rational types of alkalizing reagents and their calculated doses are substantiated by the results of experimental studies, the dependences of changes in the hydrogen index on the type and dose of reagents, residual alkalinity of water, the efficiency of water iron removal.