Fwd: FW: REQUESTED WATER QUALITY PARAMETERS
Colin Cummings
Colin Cummings
Amarillo, TX
From: Cummings, Colin P. <Cumm...@zhi.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 11:27 AM
Subject: FW: REQUESTED WATER QUALITY PARAMETERS
To: "colinth...@gmail.com" <colinth...@gmail.com>
From: Reasoner, David [mailto:David.R...@amarillo.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 11:08 AM
To: Cummings, Colin P.
Cc: Autrey, Emmett; Loan, Tim; Hartman, Floyd; Johnson, Cinda
Subject: RE: REQUESTED WATER QUALITY PARAMETERS
Colin,
The well water delivered to us by CRMWA is Roberts County well water. As it is held for some length of time exposed to surface conditions in their CRMWA holding reservoir and our City holding reservoir, it must be chlorinated. The chlorination applied at the Osage Treatment plant is chlorine gas. The chlorine gas goes into the water and forms hypochlorous acid (HOCl). This will itself kill bacteria. The hypochlorous dissociates into a hydrogen ion and a hypochlorite ion…the hypochlorite ion is also a bacteria killer. Therefore the hypochlorous acid and the hypochlorite ion are together considered the “free chlorine residual”. These highly reactive agents seek any amino group to combine with, thereafter giving monochloramine, dichloramine, and nitrogen trichloride. This grouping is called the combined residual (because it has “combined” with amines or ammonia if present). Well water has such a micro amount of these developed, we can barely even measure them. This “combined residual” usually is around 0.05 mg/L or less in the well water that has been treated with 2 mg/L chlorine. The residual chlorine that leaves the plant starts out here at about 1.8 mg/L, and as it makes its way through miles of city pipe declines to about 0.5 mg/L at the ends of our system. Along the way it interacts with various materials on the inner surface of the pipes, and some of it proceeds through reactions to terminal calcium and magnesium chlorides interlocked into the crystalline structure of the routine water hardness layer on the pipe. Some of it provides a micro amount of reaction with iron pipes and a small amount of rust is found…this part of the reason the fire department flushes fire hydrants each year. Some of the hypochlorite that has proceeded to its terminal end…nitrogen trichloride…outgases to the atmosphere. Some of the hypochlorite reacts with the micro amount of turbidity left in the water. Therefore this is the “track” taken by the chlorine in typical tap water from its source all the way to the end of the system. Realize if you don’t want any chlorine residuals of any kind in your beer making activity, you could just simply run the tap water through a carbon filter before using it. That would remove all the chlorine residuals (free and combined).
To answer the last part of your question in your email…yes over long time periods (about a month or longer), chlorine will take the evaporation route by means of the nitrogen trichloride produced. How would this be produced without amine groups (NH2)?? Remember well water almost has no amines present. What happens here is the water is continually impacted (if left open) with bacteria from the air. The bacteria have plenty of amine groups in their cellular structure. Light will also help to break down the hypochlorite in a minor way. This is why old tap water samples that have been kept sealed will end up with no measurable OCl ion, but will have slightly increased chloride levels. The path here is not the nitrogen trichloride, but rather to proceed on to simple chloride ion. This was first noticed in industry when strong industrial bleaches would degrade, and increase their chloride level. You could order up a 10% hypochlorite bleach, and in a few months discover it had degraded to only 8%!!
Hope all that helps!
David Reasoner, chief Chemist
From: Cummings, Colin P. [mailto:Cumm...@zhi.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 09, 2013 1:52 PM
To: Reasoner, David
Subject: RE: REQUESTED WATER QUALITY PARAMETERS
David,
Does that mean that chlorine gas is used to treat incoming CRMWA water (as opposed to treated effluent)? Just want to clarify that, for my beer making purposes, the tap water contains traces of chlorine. Or are you saying that the Cl becomes OCl- in the water? If the latter, will this evaporate out of the water in an open container over a period of time? My understanding is that Cl will evaporate out of an open container of water over ~24 hours. (evaporate may not be the right word)
Regards,
Colin Cummings
Procurement Specialist | Zachry Industrial, Inc.
5601 I-40 West | Amarillo, TX 79106 | 806-359-2643
From: Reasoner, David [mailto:David.R...@amarillo.gov]
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 5:37 PM
To: Cummings, Colin P.
Subject: RE: REQUESTED WATER QUALITY PARAMETERS
Dear Colin,
We use chlorine gas at the treatment plant, however liquid sodium hypochlorite (bleach) is used in a minor amount of the total, and is fed at outlying pump stations. However both liquid hypochlorite and gas chlorine both create hypochlorite ion when in the water (OCl- hypochlorite ion). We do not use chloramines.
DR
From: Cummings, Colin P. [mailto:Cumm...@zhi.com]
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 11:06 AM
To: Reasoner, David
Subject: RE: REQUESTED WATER QUALITY PARAMETERS
David,
Last question, at least for a while: does the city use chlorine or chloramines to treat the water?
Regards,
Colin Cummings
Procurement Specialist | Zachry Industrial, Inc.
5601 I-40 West | Amarillo, TX 79106 | 806-359-2643
From: Reasoner, David [mailto:David.R...@amarillo.gov]
Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 2:05 PM
To: Cummings, Colin P.
Cc: Loan, Tim; Autrey, Emmett; Johnson, Cinda; Hill, Debbie; Casey, Diane; Coffey, Michael; Nickerson, Susanna; Lemon, Mason; Olsen, Richard; Hartman, Floyd
Subject: RE: REQUESTED WATER QUALITY PARAMETERS
Dear Colin,
You ask very good questions. Here are the answers. I will begin with your question on the sodium chloride.
When we went on all well water a couple of years ago we did see an immediate downward jump of sodium chloride in the raw water. This however tended to level off into a condition of a very slow flat trajectory of lowering. It is lowering, but very slowly. Here is why. The CRMWA holding reservoir located on the north east side of Amarillo holds about 340 million gallons. It is triangular shaped and can be seen on Google earth very near the Amarillo Blvd and Fritch highway intersection. This reservoir is dirt lined(our 485 million gallon reservoir is plastic lined!). It has no boat ramps, and no way to get into it with a dozer to clean it out. It has a rock boulder bank about 15 ft tall all around it. It has never been cleaned out since it was built approx 1967. It therefore has about a 50 year head start on trapping sodium chloride in the soft bottom. It is a big reservoir and the rinse out of those minerals from a dirt bottom could take many years. CRMWA currently sends this reservoir only Roberts County Well Water, which is very similar to our well water column on the report you are looking at.
We are plotting the downward track, and it is very slow. Remember 50 years of collection, and now only about 2-3 years of rinse out!!
The other question about Listing items as CaCO3, and knowing the constituent is most likely the bicarbonate(HCO3) is driven by the field of water chemistry as it evolved from early times. This dates back to the English in Brittan and the enormous field of boiler technology in the 1800’s. Many things were calculated synthetically into a listing of Calcium Carbonate…..when in fact they are not. EPA continued this when it was formed. Even bigger, The American Waterworks Association continued it. Then going global the entire globe now signs onto a rather non-scientific system. I would rather it be pure science and items be listed for what they really are. Don’t forget that Magnesium takes the same path in water chemistry reactions…..however you will find various parameters in the water industry that are Mg as the base, but listed as CaCO3. Do some research into water hardness on the internet and you will see this easily. The conversions are always made on the atomic and molecular mass math conversions.
This is easy to do…just calculate what fractional percent one is of the other and convert it all to CaCO3. Again the earth’s population can blame the boiler water chemists for this one. I don’t like it!!
So!! A person can purchase the reagents Calcium Carbonate, Magnesium Carbonate, Sodium Carbonate, and Sodium Bicarbonate. BUT !! you can’t purchase Calcium Bicarbonate or Magnesium Bicarbonate!!! Why not? They are not even listed in known chemical index manuals. Now doesn’t that throw a kink into things!!
If they could be produced, you can bet they would be for sale somewhere, and also listed in the index manuals.
As the Carbonate anion CO3 gathers up a H ion in solution, it becomes the bicarbonate ion(HCO3)….however this is in dissolved chemical equilibrium with other cations. When everything dries out and things go back together they just don’t form those two bicarbonates. This makes sodium bicarbonate quite special in my opinion!
I better quit rambling on and get back to work.
I hope I answered your questions to your satisfaction.
Thanks,
David Reasoner
From: Cummings, Colin P. [mailto:Cumm...@zhi.com]
Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 10:33 AM
To: Reasoner, David
Subject: RE: REQUESTED WATER QUALITY PARAMETERS
David,
To resurrect this old email communication, I’d like to know a little more about the city water profile. One thing I don’t understand is why the chlorides and sodium are still so high if we’re on straight well water, since the “well water” column on the water quality report shows relatively low concentrations of these. I can understand why the blended water would be high in these, but are you still blending since lake Meredith is not delivering?
Also please clarify if you can the bicarbonate concentration, and also provide carbonate concentration (if any). What I’m reading in other places is that, at pH below 8.5 or so, the alkalinity should be almost entirely bicarbonate, but you have indicated otherwise. Please clarify.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Regards,
Colin Cummings
Procurement Specialist | Zachry Industrial, Inc.
5601 I-40 West | Amarillo, TX 79106 | 806-359-2643
From: Reasoner, David [mailto:David.R...@amarillo.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 1:49 PM
To: Cummings, Colin P.
Cc: Autrey, Emmett; Loan, Tim; Hartman, Floyd
Colin,
The answer to that is not much. I would estimate less than 20% on those items that tend to vary, and less than 10% on those items that are more steady. There are two ways that could work….
1. When we were on the lake system, we still had about 100 large water wells to blend the water as needed. We dialed in the water to a total dissolved solids of around 940 mg/L….which meets legal limits, and the water was quite consistent. This was the case until the hot summers required a lot more well water. The TDS then proceeded downward out in the distribution system as wells were added to keep up with volume.
2. The current situation is the CRMWA is all well water (lake is turned off, and no one knows when or if it will return). This means the CRMWA wells plus our approx 100 wells gives Amarillo an all well water source. We find this to be quite steady with the total dissolve solids naturally 500-800 mg/L. This depends on what groups of wells are turned on and when. There are some minor differences as noted on the annual summary report, however none should cause a problem. The hot summers are not a variable, because it is all well water anyway. Therefore this indirectly says more variation was seen when the lake was involved.
David Reasoner
From: Cummings, Colin P. [mailto:Cumm...@zhi.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 11:07 AM
To: Reasoner, David
Subject: RE: REQUESTED WATER QUALITY PARAMETERS
David,
A follow up question: since the quality parameters are an average, do they swing much by day/week/month in a given year? Is there a margin of error so to speak in terms of variance?
Regards,
Colin Cummings
Procurement Specialist | Zachry Industrial, Inc.
5601 I-40 West | Amarillo, TX 79106 | 806-359-2643
From: Reasoner, David [mailto:David.R...@amarillo.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 10:55 AM
To: Cummings, Colin P.
Cc: Autrey, Emmett; Loan, Tim; Hartman, Floyd
Subject: REQUESTED WATER QUALITY PARAMETERS
Dear Mr. Colin Cummings,
My name is David Reasoner. I am the Chief Chemist for The City of Amarillo. I received a copy of your email dated 2-6-13 to Emmett Autrey requesting the concentration(ppm) in Amarillo tap water of the following:
Ca, Na, Sulfate, Chloride, Mg, and Bicarbonate.
Ca = 47.8125 ppm
Na = 131.9351 ppm
Sulfate = 79.913 ppm
Chloride = 176.181 ppm
Magnesium = 27.4955 ppm
Bicarbonate = 115.40 ppm
The first five of these are listed on the attached water quality annual report. Please use the far right hand column called “Finished Water”.
The Bicarbonate ion is not so easy, but can be calculated from the Total Alkalinity if there is no P. Alkalinity present.
HCO3 (bicarbonate) is a fractional part of CaCO3 (units of the total alkalinity), by means of the molecular weights 100.086 to 61.016 (61.016/100.086 = 0.6096).
This concerns mass units only.
This says HCO3 is 60.96% of the mass of CaCO3. The titration test for these is the same, using Sulfuric Acid.
Using a test value from the annual report of 189.3 ppm(mg/L) Total Alkalinity… 189.3 X 0.6096 = 115.40 mg/L (ppm) as Bicarbonate ion (HCO3) in City Water.
If, in some future case, the bicarbonate is needed where P. Alkalinity is present it would be best to proceed as follows….
1. At pH values above 8.3, run a standard alkalinity test, level the titration at 8.3, and disregard Phenolphthalein Alkalinity resulting from hydroxide, actual carbonate, or other substances which could be contained in pH ranges of 14—8.3.
2. Proceed to continue the test titration from 8.3 down to 4.5…this specific range is dedicated to bicarbonate in the field of water analysis. It is also known as the M. Alkalinity (Methyl Orange Alkalinity). …..(Therefore P. Alkalinity + M. Alkalinity = total Alkalinity)
You may not have wanted this extra detail, however it may come in handy in the future.
If there are any questions, feel free to call me at 806-342-1524.
Thank you,
David Reasoner