The journey for water starts here at the Intake tower,
which is home to the intake pumps which uptake from the lake.
One must be careful in this room.
The water runs uphill to the treatment center where it undergoes its purification and filtration steps.
It starts in the settling basin where chemicals bind with impurities and settle out from the water.
The water undergoes more chemical treatment and then goes to the rapid sand filtration which eliminates many microbes and continues filtration.
After more chemical treatment the water is sent out to the town and other holding basins, while some is stored onsite in a 5million gallon reserve tank.
So you may be asking what happens with the by product or sludge?
Well it is left out in retention to dry and is then compressed into this comact version, which smells not so pleasant and feels like clay rubber.
Thanks to Tom Golson and Jon Callahan from the Monroe Water Treatment Plant for giving us the tour.
That was almost as good as getting to go. I was bummed they wouldn't let me bring the kids, but sleeping in was OK. Were they specific about the chemical processes?
ReplyDeleteNot very, they were able to tell us what chemicals were used in what steps/rooms of the purification process, but they did not get into detail about any stepwise process or how the reactions actually work. I think this was more or less for the sake of brevity because we went through alot of the plant, and they did get a chance to cover the basics for how everything was done.
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to go our there.
ReplyDeleteWhat does the sludge consist of and what do they do with it?
I believe the sludge consists of the byproducts of the purification process after the chemicals combine with the impurities and what doesn't filter through the rapid sand filtration process. These byproducts are dried and compressed into what is shown above, and then loaded into a dump truck and sent out to the landfill.
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