CHY 1701

Engineering Chemistry
Module 2 – Part B

Dr. M. Akhila Maheswari

“Millions of people will die each year from dirty water and water-related
diseases.”
Chairman of the World Commission on
Water for the 21st Century

“Water, this most precious commodity, is in

peril in virtually all parts of the globe.”
Marq De Villiers

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 Drinking water or Municipal water
Should satisfy the following requirements

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 Treatment of Municipal Drinking Water
• Screening – to remove floating matters
• Aeration – to remove BOD and improve taste of
water
• Sedimentation & Coagulation – this is done after
chemical treatment (using lime-soda)
• Filtration – Gravity (or) Pressure sand filters
• Sterilization and disinfection – Chlorination, UV
treatment and Ozonolysis
• Storage and distribution

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Coagulant (Alum or Ferrous sulphate)
When added to water, forms an insoluble gelatinous,
flocculant precipitate, which descent through water, adsorbs and
entangles very fine suspended impurities forming bigger flocs, which
settle down easily

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 MgSO4 + 2CO2

FeSO4 + Mg(HCO3)2 → Fe(OH)2 + MgSO4 + 2CO2

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 Removal of micro-organisms

1. Contains the small percentage of pathogenic bacteria –

disease producing
2. Drinking water must be freed from pathogenic bacteria and
micro-organisms
3. The process of destroying /killing the disease producing
bacteria, micro-organism in drinking water is called
disinfection
4. The chemicals or substances – added to water for killing the
bacteria – disinfectants
Disinfection of water – methods:
1. By boiling
2. By adding bleaching powder
3. By chlorination
4. By using chloramine
5. By ozone
• By boiling water for 10-15 min. (only at home not in municipal
process)

-kill only existing germs in water at the time of boiling

-does not provide any protection against future possible

contamination

- very costly

- impossible to employ this in the large scale systems

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By adding bleaching powder (Municipal
treatment)
About 1kg of bleaching powder per 1000 kiloliters of water is
mixed
Produces hypochlorous acid (powerful germicide)

CaOCl2 + H2O → Ca(OH)2 + Cl2

Cl2 + H2O → HCl + HOCl
Germs + HOCl → Germs are killed

Disadvantages
Introduces Calcium in water, thereby making it more hard

Disintegrates during storage – analyze the chlorine content

Excess of it gives a bad taste and smell to treated water

Chlorination (Municipal treatment)
– Chlorine (either gas or in concentrated solution form)
produces hypochlorous acid, which is a powerful
germicide

Cl2 + H2O HCl + HOCl

Germs + HOCl Germs are killed

Mechanism of Action:
Disinfecting action of Chlorine – nascent oxygen liberated –
oxidizes harmful bacteria
Chemical reaction of HOCl with enzymes – inactivation of enzyme
Enzyme – essential for metabolic processes of the micro-organism

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Factors affecting efficiency of chlorine
1. Number of micro-organism destroyed by chlorine per unit
time is proportional to the number of micro-organism alive.
2. The rate of reaction with enzymes increases with
temperature.
3. pH values between 5.0 - 6.5, less contact time is enough.

HOCl ↔H+ + OCl-

HOCl is more destructive than OCl-

Advantages
(i) Effective and economical (ii) used low as well as high temp
(iii) most ideal
Disadvantages
(i) should not exceed 0.1 – 0.2 ppm (ii) less effective in higher
pH values (iii) excess chlorine produces unpleasant taste and
odour.
 Break point chlorination or free-residual
chlorination
Involves addition of sufficient amount of chlorine to
oxidize
organic matters,
reducing substances,
free ammonia
Need?
free chlorine to kill bacteria

The addition of chlorine at the dip or break, wherein

the free chlorine is available to kill bacteria is called
break-point chlorination

The point at which free residual chlorine begins to

appear 18
Advantages of Break Point:
-Oxidizes completely organic compounds – remove the color – organic matters
-100% destroys disease producing bacteria
-Removes both odor and taste from the water
De-chlorination:
Over chlorination after the break point
Produces unpleasant taste and smell
Removed through addition of sulphur dioxide or sodium
sulphite
SO2+Cl2 + 2H2O → H2SO4 + 2HCl
Na2SO3 + Cl2 + H2O → Na2SO4 + 2HCL
 Chloramine (ClNH2)

Cl2 + NH3 ClNH2 + HCl

(Chloroamine)

ClNH2 + H2O HOCl + NH3

(Disinfectant)

The best chlorinating way: why?

• Stable than chlorine alone
• Better disinfectant – excess does not produce irritating
taste or smell
• Imparts a good taste to treated water

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 Disinfection by ozone

3O2 2O3

O3 O2 + [O.]
Nascent oxygen

It is produced by passing silent electric discharge through cold

and dry oxygen
It is highly unstable and breaks down, liberates nascent
oxygent
This method is quite expensive – can not employed for
disinfection of domestic water supply
 UV treatment
• Disinfection of Drinking Water with Ultraviolet Light

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 UV - Sterilizer
UV radiation
• Low pressure and medium pressure UV lamps are available
• reacts primarily with nucleic acids: pyrimidine dimers and
other alterations
Primary uses:
Primary physical disinfectant

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Advantages of UV Disinfection:
• Highly effective on broad range of pathogens
• Forms no harmful disinfection by-products
• Inactivation independent of pH and temperature
• No unpleasant taste or odor
• No transportation, storage or handling of chemicals
• Easily installed within existing water treatment facilities
• Low capital and operating costs – only small scale systems
• Simple to operate
• Minimal hazard risk for operators

Limitations

• Limited experience and data with large flows.

• Water with high concentrations of iron, calcium, turbidity, and phenols
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Membrane Technology for Water Treatment

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 Membrane Filtration
– Physical separation process
What is filtration?
Filtration is a process of removing particulate matter from
water by forcing the water through a porous media. This
porous media can be natural, in the case of sand, gravel and
clay, or it can be a membrane wall made of various materials.

- Membrane materials
• Organic polymers
• Inorganic materials such as ceramic, glass or metal

Membranes made of organic polymers are dominating the market

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Polymeric membranes:
Synthetic organic polymeric membranes can divided into two
classes
i.e., hydrophobic and hydrophilic.
Hydrophilic polymers such as
cellulose and its derivatives
Hydrophobic membranes such as
polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE),
polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF),
polyethylene (PE), or polypropylene (PP)
Polyacrylonitrile (PAN)
Polysulfone
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Types of membranes - Membrane Configurations
The principal types of membranes are:
1. Tubular Modules

2. Hollow Fiber

3. Spiral Wound Modules

Spiral-Wound Membranes 29
 Pressure Membrane Processes

• Microfiltration (MF), which can remove particles ranging in size

from 10-100 μm. It is operated in the pressure range of 10 psig.

• Ultrafiltration (UF), which can remove particles ranging in size

from 0.01 to 10 μm. It is operated in the pressure range of 15 psig.

• Nanofiltration (NF), which can remove particles size from 0.001

μm to 0.01 μm. It is operated in the pressure range of 75-250 psig.

• Reverse osmosis (RO), which can remove particles in the size

range of 0.1-1.0 nm. It operates in the pressure range of 200-1200
psig.
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 Brackish Water
The water containing dissolved salts with a peculiar salty taste –
Salt Water

Desalination of Brackish Water

The process of removing common salt from water

• Electrodialysis
• Reverse osmosis (Pressure membrane
process)
 Reverse osmosis
• Reverse osmosis filters have a pore size around 0.0001 micron
• After water passes through a reverse osmosis filter, it is
essentially pure water
• In addition to removing all organic molecules and viruses,
reverse osmosis also removes most minerals that are present
in the water
• Reverse osmosis removes monovalent ions, which means that
it desalinates the water

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 Principle - Reverse osmosis
❖ When two solutions of unequal concentration are separated by a semi-
permeable membrane, flow of solvent takes place from dilute to concentration
side, due to increase in osmostic pressure, which is termed as osmosis.
❖ However, when a hydrostatic pressure in excess of osmotic pressure is applied
on the concentrated side, the solvent flow is reversed from concentrated side to
dilute side, across the membrane. This principle is termed as reverse osmosis.
❖ The semi-permeable membrane (in reverse osmosis) is selective in not
permitting the passage of dissolved solute particles such as molecules, ions, etc.)
It permits only the flow of water molecules (solvent) from the concentrated to
dilute side.
❖ Cellulose acetate, polyamide, etc., are used as membrane
❖ Reverse osmosis process requires only mechanical force to generate the
required hydrostatic pressure.
❖ Hydrostatic pressure generated is in the order of 15-40 Kg m-2

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 Principle of osmosis and reverse osmosis

• When two solutions of unequal concentrations are separated by

a semipermeable membrane, solvent will flow from lower
concentration to higher concentration
• This phenomenon can be reversed (solvent flow reversed) by
applying hydrostatic pressure on the concentrated side
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Osmosis Reverse Osmosis

Hydrostatic pressure in excess

of osmotic pressure is applied,
the solvent flow reverses ➢Cellulose acetate
➢Polysulfone
➢Polysulfone amide
➢Polyamide
➢Poly-acrylonitrile
Reverse Osmosis

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Advantages: Reverse
Osmosis

1. Removes ionic, non-ionic, colloidal and high

molecular weight organic matter

2. Removes colloidal silica

3. Low Maintenance cost -Life time (~2 years)

4. Easy membrane replacement

5. Low operating cost, high reliability

Membrane Applications in Water Treatment

• Desalting seawater
• Treating brackish groundwater
• Water softening – hardness removal
• Waste water recovery
• Removing color, odor, and other organic
contaminants

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 Principle -Electrodialysis
➢ Electrodialysis is an electrochemical process whereby electrically charged
particles, ions, are transported from a raw solution (retentate, diluate) into a
more concentrated solution (permeate, concentrate) through ion-selective
membranes by applying an electric field.

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 Theory of Electrodialysis
• Electrodialysis chamber comprises of sheet like barriers made out of high-
capacity, highly cross-linked ion exchange membranes that allow passage of
ions but not of water.
• There are two types : (a) Cation exchange and (b) Anion exchange
membranes
• Cation exchange membranes consists of an insoluble matrix and mobile
cation reside in the pore space that allows the pass through of only cations.
• Anion exchange membranes consists of an insoluble matrix and mobile anion
reside in the pore space that allows the pass through of only anions.
• Cation- and Anion- exchange membranes are installed alternatively in the
tank.
• By impressing electricity on the electrodes, the positive anode attracts
negative ions in solution, while the negative cathode attracts positive ions in
the solution.

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