Water Wells

TECHNOLOGY OF TREATING IRRIGATION WELL WATER WITHOUT REVERSE OSMOSIS

Well water often contains high levels of minerals dissolved in it expressed as high Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and referred to as brackish or salty water. Once the TDS level of 1000 mg of minerals per liter (PPM) is measured in the water, crops require an additional quantity of water to continue to thrive. This doesn’t mean or imply that the minerals are toxic to the plants. Rather, the high TDS water fails to adequately flow within the circulatory system (xylems) of plants. The extra required watering levels are scary because of the possibility of running a well dry.

One popular way to overcome the issue of high TDS is to incorporate reverse osmosis to reduce the level of minerals in the water. There are pitfalls to this approach. First, as much as 50% of water is wasted in the process thus increasing the scarcity scare. Second, the capital and operating costs are extremely high. Finally, the disposal of wasted water becomes an issue.

We are convinced through testing years ago that reverse osmosis is effective not because dissolved solids are reduced but because the resulting surface tension reduction of water enhances the capillary action within plants allowing water to flow freely to the plant’s extremity. If a method to reduce surface tension without the pitfalls of reverse osmosis were available, significant cost and water savings would occur. Some refer to this as making water wetter.

If we look closely at the chemistry of water at the molecular level, there are two items that enter into its flowing/surface tension characteristics. One is directly related to the level of the dissolved solids in the water and is called the hydrated radius of ions (HRI). All dissolved solids in water exist as small, invisible charged particles called ions. These charges attract and loosely hold a small cluster of water molecules to each ion. These cluster formations last from nanoseconds to years and raise surface tension. The second is hydrogen bonding (HB) of multiple water molecules creating clusters. This bonding is due to the non-symmetric placement of the two hydrogen atoms around the single oxygen atom in water which leaves electrons to bond to the oxygen atom of adjacent water molecules. These bonds are transient and disappear/reappear in nanoseconds without rest. The bonding of molecules with clusters also increases the surface tension.

The entire issue of elevated surface tension and its negative effect on the successful watering of plants is the result of relatively small forces naturally occurring at the molecular level of water. It would appear that disruption or elimination of these forces would be extremely helpful in making less water go further in hydrating plants. How can this be done? By applying various frequencies of electrical energy into the water! In previous blogs, we have described how an electrical conductor (such as water containing dissolved solids) is passed through a magnetic field (such as Neodymium permanent magnets), and an alternating current is produced in the conductor (water) in accordance with Faradays Law upon which all electrical generators are based.

Dime Water, Inc. offers two product lines that produce this energy and have demonstrated their water-saving capabilities over many years. One is the MGM family designed exclusively for surface tension reduction and the other is the ESF family which not only reduces water surface tension but also prevents hardness scale in irrigation pipes and hardware. Neither requires electricity, chemicals, or field service. Both are constructed to last for many years in harsh environments and not waste a drop of water.

For those looking to improve the quality of their well water, exploring well water treatment systems is a wise step. These systems are designed to address various issues, including high levels of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and other minerals that can affect plant health. By incorporating well water treatment systems, such as ESF, MGM or other innovative technologies offered by Dime Water, Inc., crop growers can effectively reduce the mineral content in their water, leading to improved plant hydration and growth. Investing in well water treatment systems not only benefits plant life but also helps in conserving water resources, making it a sustainable choice for agricultural practices.

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Water Treatment Process

1. Water availability issues. For all of recorded time, crop growth and watering of livestock has depended on available rainfall, lakes, rivers, streams and natural reservoirs. All are classified as surface water. Some advanced societies diverted natural sources to locations where needed and soon thereafter hand dug wells tapped into shallow level aquifers. Water withdrawal was by bucket and rope. By the mid nineteenth century, hand pumps were available and soon after, windmills powered the pumps. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that reliable submersible electric pumps enabled large volume water withdrawal for irrigation and other applications. Too much of a good thing has forced ever lowering of ground water levels and dropping pump levels. Unfortunately, rain water has not been able to percolate through the ground to replenish the aquifer levels as quickly as it is being withdrawn so two things are happening – we are running out of available water and the quality is getting worse. Since 2014, the scientific community has been pursuing the possibility of there being as much as 3 times as much fresh water as there is sea water deep within the earth. Deep is an understatement because depth estimates range from 200 to 400 miles. The discovery and ongoing interest are based on seismic studies and our ever-increasing knowledge of tectonic plate physics. The water exists in a phase that is neither liquid, solid or vapor but in a 4th state (possibly as hydroxyl-OH) absorbed in a mineral called ringwoodite. This mineral is formed from magnesium silicate (Mg2SiO4) under high temperature and pressure. Sounds farfetched, but so did fracking for oil 30 years ago.
2. Number of agricultural wells in USA Latest (2018) USDA numbers are:
   1. 231,000 farms irrigated 56 million acres with 83.4 million acre-feet (27 trillion gallons) of water. This equates to 12,000,000 gallons per farm.
   2. Five states account for 50% of all agricultural wells
      1. California – 15%  35,000 farms
      2. Nebraska – 14%  32,000 farms
      3. Arkansas – 8%     18,000 farms
      4. Texas – 7%           16,000 farms
      5. Idaho – 6%           14,000 farms
3. Well water problems related to agriculture
   1. Crop production. 90% of problems are related to high Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) which is expressed as Parts Per Million (PPM). If a gallon of water were boiled until all wetness is gone and all that was left is typically a white to tan powder or scale, this Solid material would be everything from the periodic table of elements that were dissolved in the water. By weighing the Total of these solids and using arithmetic to determine their weight in a million pounds (120,000 gallons) of water. Distilled water has a TDS value of 0 and sea water is 32,000. Well water values are all over the range, but 350 PPM to 16,000 PPM are commonly found in agricultural well water tests. DS values above 750 PPM inhibit plants from freely up taking water from the soil and circulating it in the xylem system to deliver necessary nutrients. At higher levels and with certain chemical ratios such as that of sodium and calcium (SAR) can actually come close to stopping flow. The primary problem with high TDS is its directly proportional effect on the water’s surface tension which lowers its ability to climb in the plant due to capillary attraction. Also, there are often concentrations of one or two elements among the dozens or more in a particular well that inhibit growth or quality of a crop. State and/or county agricultural departments, working in concert with research universities, publish lists of water parameters for virtually all possible crops. One element in water that negatively affects both plants and animals is boron.
   2. Animal use. Unique to virtually all species of all farm animals is their ability to sense high TDS in the drinking water offered to them. Simply put, they will drink only enough to sustain life and will become dehydrated. Cattle and dairy farmers sell the weight of their product as a carcass or as a liquid both being over 90% water. Lower water intake and retention significantly reduces profitability. There are certain elements in water that are dangerous to animals that they do not sense.
      1. Sulfates. They act as a cathartic leading to diarrhea. Extreme fluid lost and rapid digestive transit time lowering nutrient uptake.
      2. Nitrates. Body changes nitrate to nitrite which lessens the blood’s ability to transport oxygen and leads to weakness and frailty.
      3. Insecticides, pesticides, fertilizers, etc. Neurotoxins causing difficult-to-diagnose behavioral and physical issues.
4. Current technologies for treatment of agricultural well water
   1. Reverse Osmosis (R.O.)
      This water treatment process has matured significantly since its inception in the 1960’s. In the last 10 years, changes in technology have been incremental, so the process is stable and results predictable. The technology revolves around a thin sheet of plastic material not unlike Saran Wrap through which water containing the dissolved elements discussed above. This material is referred to as a membrane and has the unique ability to pass water molecules and hold back or reject elements when the water/element combination is pressurized. The process is not 100% effective, so typical results are 70 to 99% removal of the dissolve elements based on element concentration (TDS), applied pressure, temperature, specific membrane chemistry and other equipment subtleties. The primary benefit of the RO is to lower the water surface tension to improve water transit through plant to deliver nutrients. Performance ranges are:
      1. Applied (pumping) pressures. 150 PSI at moderate TDS levels to 800 PSI at high TDS levels.
      2. Energy consumption. Using 35,000 gallons per day use of treated water and 65% recovery (35% of all water to drain) as a base line, electrical power required would be  5.7 kWh on the moderate TDS levels and 26 kWh for the high TDS levels
      3. Waste water. The rejected elements need to be carried away in a waste water stream that represents 25 to 50% of water delivered to the system. This water is almost always too bad to have any use.
      4. Equipment cost. CAPEX. Using the parameters from (2) above, the end user should expect to pay slightly over $100,000.00 installed on a prepared site and $300,000.00 for a high TDS system.
      5. Operating cost. OPEX. Plan on 5% annually of original purchase price PLUS cost of electricity over a 15-year effective system life for consumables, membrane cleaning and/or replacement, anti-scale chemicals, replacement parts, etc., etc.
   2. Ion exchange.
      This is a process dating to the late 1920’s where one to 3 contaminants such as nitrates, alkalinity, calcium, etc. can be removed from a well stream by substituting the offending element for chloride, sodium, hydrogen, hydroxide, etc. Although effective, there is a waste stream with chemicals that may percolate through the soil and contaminate the aquifer or it may need to be removed as hazmat.  Depending on the specific ion exchange (resin) used and its regenerating chemical, drain volume will run from 2 to 10% of total water requirement. The TDS reduction is minimal if at all so that there is seldom a measurable
      lowering of the surface tension.
   3. Absorption media holds on to contaminant, but adds nothing in exchange. Primary function is to remove selectively elements that are discarded. When media capacity is full, chemicals and/or backwashing take place or media is discarded. Classic uses are for iron, manganese, arsenic and boron. None reduce the TDS or the surface tension.
   4. Catalytic/magnetic and Magnetic.
      Both processes run a conductor (water) through a strong magnetic field. Faraday’s Law causes a voltage to be developed. This energy is known to lower the surface tension on many (but not all) high TDS water supplies. TDS is not reduced.
5. THE FUTURE
   Worldwide, water withdrawal from aquafers is estimated at 75 trillion gallons annually with replenishment at <2% from rainfall. Unfortunately, withdrawal in coastal areas is causing seawater intrusion that progressively makes the well water less acceptable and requiring even higher levels of treatment before use. There are no supportive numbers on the number of wells drying up, but it is happening. 8+ billion people on earth need to be fed but because of water scarcity many may die of starvation. We have established in this presentation that reverse osmosis is the go-to technology to obtain water with acceptable chemistry for plants and animals in spite of unrealistically high CAPEX and OPEX. Let’s pause for a moment and truly think of what is going on. Water containing only ½% by weight of minerals (5,000 PPM) is unsatisfactory for irrigation or animals, but the RO process uses energy-consuming pressures and expensive hardware to literally pull the 99-1/2% water away from the ½% minerals. Wouldn’t it make more sense to reach into unpressurized water and pull out the small weight of minerals? Basic arithmetic says this could reduce energy needs by as much as 99-1/2% and a high percentage reduction of hardware cost depending on the technology used. That technology is available as DIME IMPROVED CAPACITIVE DEIONIZATION (DICDI).Dime Improved Capacitive Deionization
6. DICDI equipment involves the use of a relatively large volume of a custom adsorbent assembly (cell) immersed in unpressurized high TDS water. A low voltage, low amperage (low power) current flows through the water and adsorbent causing minerals in the water to cling into the adsorbent thus removed from the water and resulting in a significant reduction in TDS and surface tension. Power requirements are low enough to be handled by a small solar array. When the adsorbent becomes saturated with minerals, electrical polarity is reversed for a short time and adsorbed minerals are discharged into a low volume of water to drain. The DICDI adsorbent is made of 3 low-cost sustainable materials and processing involves 2 steps and some easy to fabricate, low-cost fixtures. Scaling from a system producing 500 gallons daily to 5,000 or 50,000 gallons is nothing more than increasing the number of adsorbent cells and increasing the support frame size. The DICDI process can reasonably expect to lower the ex-factory equipment cost by 75% and operating cost by 90% when compared to Reverse Osmosis. The systems are designed and constructed to improve well water quality for growing edible crops and to help animals thrive on the water they drink by treatment of water with a TDS range from 750 to 18,000 PPM. At this stage it not intended to treat 32,000 PPM sea water though future iterations may be adapted for this use.

A few years ago, while testing customer-supplied water samples in our lab to make equipment recommendations, I noticed a slight surface sheen in one beaker of water. Rather than immediately running a camphor test for the presence/absence of oil, the color prompted me to approach the surface with a flame. The material on or in the water sample ignited and supported a flame for a few moments. Had the material simply ignited in a single, rapid whoosh, methane caused by decaying organic material would be the cause, but this was obviously different.

Having tested thousands of water samples as a lab manager years earlier, the above was so unusual that it piqued my curiosity. All I knew was that the sample came from a residential well in the Ramona, CA area. A longtime resident and plumber in the area told us that beginning in the WWll era, defense manufacturers and others would bury drums of spent or dirty chemicals. At the time, what is known as East County now encompassing many communities, was sparsely populated and a tempting disposal area. It wouldn’t be a surprise if there were numerous such areas scattered around the US and elsewhere. I believe we recommended a combination of activated carbon and organically modified clay.

This is one example of a surprise contaminate in a well water sample. Typically, residential well water supplies are minimally tested when first drilled and not again until something obvious (discoloration, offensive odor, corrosion, etc.) is noticed or the home is sold. Be aware that the aquafer supplying a well can spread out for miles and be exposed to not only discarded chemicals but agricultural insecticides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers. Animal waste causing nitrates and harmful bacteria is also a common problem. Also be aware that a water test is a snapshot in time and that such things as heavy water use by a close, large well such a golf course, a new subdivision or heavy rainfall can alter test results dramatically.

Dime Water has staff engineers and an extensive array of products enabling us to identify and cure even the most difficult water problems. Of equal importance, we specialize in treating customers’ water with processes that often eliminate or dramatically reduce drain waste which is critical in areas where low production and questionable wells are very common. Additionally, these processes require no salt or chemicals which can negatively impact septic systems.

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Over 15 million US households drink well water, according to the CDC. These private wells are not covered by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that protect public drinking water systems. As a private well owner, this means that you are responsible for ensuring the quantity and quality of your own water supply.

Ground water has been used in California since the first inhabitants began using water that seeped from the springs. However, in some areas, the use of water is threatened by high rates of extraction and inadequate recharge, or by contamination of aquifers as a result of land use practices. Poor quality water is enough to make anyone want to change water providers. If you represent a commercial entity, you can find out how to switch your water supplier online. Although our country has one of the safest drinking water supplies in the world, sources can still become contaminated through:

• naturally occurring chemicals and minerals
• local land use practices
• malfunctioning wastewater treatment systems
• other sources

Top Causes of Outbreaks in Private Wells

If a private well was contaminated, it can impact not only the household it serves, but also nearby households using the same aquifer. Ground water is not 100% pure water and always contains some dissolved minerals, as it collects in the tiny pore spaces within sediments and in the fractures within bedrock. The presence of contaminants in drinking water can lead to health issues, including gastrointestinal illness, neurological disorders and reproductive problems.

The top 6 causes of outbreaks in individual (private) wells are:

• Hepatitis A
• Giardia
• Campylobacter and E. coli (tie)
• Shigella
• Cryptosporidium and Salmonella (tie)
• Arsenic, gasoline, nitrate, phenol and selenium (tie)

Private wells should be checked every year for mechanical problems, cleanliness, and the presence of coliform bacteria, nitrates and any other contaminants of concern. The well should be located so rainwater flows away from it, because rainwater can pick up harmful bacteria and chemicals on the land’s surface. If this water pools near your well, it can seep into it and could cause health problems.

Common Sources of Potential Ground Water Contamination

The following table shows the most common sources that lead to ground water contamination.

The Need for Water Testing

Because bacterial contamination cannot be detected by smell, sight or taste, the only way to know if a water supply contains bacteria is to have it tested. The EPA does not regulate wells and there is no requirement to have private wells, springs or other sources tested – it is up to the individual homeowner to do it. Those who depend on a private well should test their water source at least 4 times per year but if not possible, at least 1 time is mandatory. Also, checking for leakage in the pipes that supply the well water to the home, can be useful. Sometimes even when the well water is tested pure, people may get waterborne diseases due to some impurities in the water caused by the leakage in the supply pipe. It is advisable to get hold of a reliable plumbing service that can come in any time when requested to help with issues such as leakage. You can use the internet to find plumbers in your locality, for instance, someone from Sydney can just type ‘24 hr plumber Sydney‘ on the internet, and get many results for local plumbers that can help them. Additionally, private water supplies should generally be tested for bacterial safety as follows:

• any time a component of the water system is opened for repair
• at least once a year
• when a laboratory test indicates high nitrate and human or livestock waste is suspected
• when a new well is constructed
• when an existing well is returned to service
• whenever bacterial contamination is suspected, as might be indicated by continuing illness
• whenever the well is inundated by flood waters or surface runoff

Testing for all individual pathogens is impractical and expensive. Bacterial safety of drinking water is monitored by testing for coliform bacteria. If tests reveal the presence of coliform bacteria, there is an indication that pathogenic bacteria, protozoa and viruses may also be present in the water. Some city/county health department laboratories as well as most commercial water testing laboratories provide bacterial testing for private well owners, for a fee.

You can contact the nearest laboratory and ask for a drinking water bacterial purity test kit that will allow you to collect a sample of your well water and send it to the laboratory for testing. The laboratory must receive the sample within 48 hours of collection, otherwise it will not test it.

Well Water Treatment Options

If testing confirms the presence of coliform bacteria in your water, you should use an alternative water supply or disinfect your water supply until the problem can be corrected. Whilst a water heater can be used to kill off bacteria that enters the home it is best to err on the side of caution. First American amongst other advisors warn that if the temperature of the water heater is too low, bacteria like legionella can fester inside the heater itself. All in all, it is probably better to treat the bacteria at the source. Treatment methods that include the use of UV light disinfection tools (provided by the likes of R-Zero Systems) tend to be effective for the removal or inactivation of some pathogens like enteric viruses, Giardia, Legionella, or Cryptosporidium. Following are some of the most common treatment methods:

• disinfection and/or filtration
• disinfection with UV light
• disinfection with ozone
• disinfection with chlorine

The easiest cure and overall least expensive is to install an Ultra Violet (UV) system. Properly matched to the water peak flow, the UV will provide years of protection with the only maintenance required being an annual bulb change. Energy requirement is less than most light bulbs and installation is quite simple.

Resources:

• https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/wells/diseases.html
• https://water.epa.gov/drink/info/well/whatyoucando.cfm
• https://www.water.ca.gov/waterconditions/drought/wellinfo.cfm
• https://www.water-research.net/index.php/bacteria
• https://www.waterandhealth.org/newsletter/private_wells.html

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