Natural Water Treatment for Pools, Spas, and more
By: Dan Cook, Conservation Solutions Corporation
THE PROBLEMS
The Zambarano Hospital replaced their window air conditioners with a central cooling plant with a cooling tower and absorption chiller. They wanted to provide first class water treatment without polluting the water with hazardous chemicals since the cooling system is adjacent to the lake that supplies water to the hospital.
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Creative Water Solutions is currently in beta testing with water treatment for animal husbandry in the hog and dairy cow segments of the market. Since the federal government outlawed prophylactic administration of antibiotics for farm animals, water quality and purity has become a critical issue in animal health.
We are finishing a six-month beta test on a sow facility outside Morris, MN. We did a water analysis of the needs of the sow barn and designed a system to deliver adequate amounts of ProMoss™ treated water to satisfy the needs of the sows and the maintenance of the facility.
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Legionella pneumonia was in the news again last week due to cases traced to Disneyland® cooling towers in Southern California. Of the 12 reported cases as of this writing, one patient has died. After the New York City outbreak in the Bronx in 2015, strict testing and reporting standards were instituted statewide. All towers are tested quarterly with water samples sent to a state certified testing facility. Any result that records greater than 20 CFU/mL but less than 1000 CFU requires online disinfection and retest in 3-7 days. When less than 20 CFU/mL is reached, routine maintenance continues. Greater than 1000 CFU requires state notification, online decontamination and retest. If any retest continues to be greater than 1000 CFU/mL, the cooling tower must be drained, decontaminated, and retested until it is below 1000 CFU/ml.
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The World Aquatic Health Conference was held in Denver on October 18-20 and it continues to be the premier science and education conference of the aquatic industry. My presentation on “The Relationship Between Organic Load, Disinfection Byproducts and Sphagnum Moss” was just one of many talks on the growing interest, and concern, about disinfection byproducts in recreational water and the surrounding air. In fact, during the two days of the Advanced Chemistry track, seven of the nine presentations were either about the contaminants found in swimming pools and/or the dynamics of disinfection byproduct production and presence in the water and air of natatoriums.
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You are all very familiar with what The Moss™ does for your customer’s swimming pools and spas. It is highly effective at reducing the overall organic contamination in pools and spas. It is especially effective on removing the organic contamination on the filtration media. This results in more easily managed pool with crystal clear water that uses less chemicals, less water, and provides a healthier pool experience.
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What’s the best way to test the effect of The Moss™ on a sample of water? I’ve talked to many people who took some Moss samples and decided to test water to see if it really does what we claim. They’ve tried putting The Moss™ a glass of water and left it on the windowsill in the sun, they’ve put The Moss™ in a bucket of water and left it on their office floor. All these are well-intentioned attempts to see if The Moss™ works. The only problem is that their needs to be water interaction with The Moss™ leaves with flowing or moving water and to achieve this interaction. After many trials in the lab, I’ve found that an inexpensive 2 gallon aquarium and filter-pump system makes the perfect way to test water.
Two of the many properties ProMoss™ brings to industrial water treatment are flocculation and removal of scale. Flocculation produces clear water by binding TSS (total suspended solids) together until they fall out of solution. Chemical companies charge a lot of money for flocculants and polymers to accomplish the same task. This function of the ProMoss™ only becomes a problem when there is a large load of TSS and the treated water needs to pass a small orifice like a spray nozzle. In this case it makes total sense to place a 40-100 micron bag filter after the ProMoss™ contact chamber to remove the TSS that ProMoss™ has removed from the water by flocculation. If there are no small orifice critical points in the system, filtration may not be necessary.
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These photos are from a tobacco processing plant air washer system in the Southeast US. The plant was switched from chemical treatment toProMoss™ to address corrosion and odor issues in the plant resulting from the use of high levels of oxidizing biocides to maintain bacterial control. These photos are from a section of pipe leading into the system’s plate and frame heat exchanger. The first photo was taken right after the start of theProMoss™ treatment program (which included 1-2.5 ppm hydrogen peroxide). The second photo was taken three months later. Treatment with ProMoss™ has resulted in significant removal of old deposits; the result of years of operation under chemical treatment from multiple vendors.
Being the first of the month, I changed The Moss™ in my pool, removed the four paper filters that were
loaded with cottonwood seeds – removed the four filters that were soaking in Breakaway® and a little bleach for the past month – rinsed off the Breakaway® and inserted them in the filter body. The dirty
filters went in the plastic garbage can filled with water, half a bottle of Breakaway® and a cup of bleach.
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Sphagnum moss does a LOT of great things in ANY body of water, and we constantly get questions from dealers on how to accurately describe its capabilities and benefits — and also whether it’s a filter, biocidal and other technical questions.
As a result, we’ve created this one-page overview on what moss does, and doesn’t provide for both commercial and residential pool/spa applications. It’s a good review for even experienced dealers, and a concise training aid for new sales and service staff.
