Reducing nitrate levels from drinking water in WA Aboriginal Homeland Communities: Testing the viability of Small-Scale reverse osmosis

Brandon Z Lim

Background: Remote communities usually suffer from poor quality drinking water. One common contaminant in said drinking water that is present in Western Australian remote communities is Nitrates. High Nitrates can have detrimental health effects such as cancer, kidney problems, and Infant methemoglobinemia (Blue Baby Syndrome). The EVOFILTER Reverse Osmosis (RO) filtration system is a possible end of pipe solution to this problem. Untreated water is inputted into the system via a water pump and is forced through a Reverse Osmosis membrane and outputted to 2 output streams: the filter stream which contains fresh treated water that has passed through the membrane, and the waste stream contains water that is heavily laden with contaminants kept out by the pore size of the membrane. Aim: This research aims to determine the suitability of the EVOFILTER system as a solution to the problem of high nitrate levels present in the drinking water of Remote Communities. This was done through varying the parameters of the water inputted into the system, along with determining the systems effectiveness in removing other contaminants. Content: Real water samples were obtained from 3 different areas from the Remote Community known as Pandanus Park (Pat’s House, Refresh Centre and Office). The Nitrate concentration of the samples were obtained using the Ion Chromatography system. Due to limited supplies of real water samples, synthetic water samples were created using Deionized (DI) water spiked with Nitrates in the form of Sodium Nitrate (NaNO3) to the concentrations found in the real water samples (~60-63 ppm or mg/l). These water samples were then run through the EVOFILTER system to determine the systems effectiveness in removing nitrates from drinking water. Parameters such as temperature and nitrate levels of the input water were varied to determine their effect on the system’s ability to filter nitrates, however analysis done on the resultant filtered water (via Ion Chromatography) showed minimal changes to the system’s ability to filter out >99% of the nitrates found in the input stream. The system also displayed the ability to filter out Uranium and Arsenic to values of<1μg/l, however an analysis of the waste stream revealed that the filter had a tendency to retain uranium ions instead of flushing it out in the waste stream. Despite the systems low yield rate of only 25-30%, its high effectiveness, portable design, ability to withstand brownouts with minimal damage, the upcoming improvements planned by the producer EVODROP, along with their humanitarian intent, makes the EVODROP reverse osmosis system a suitable solution to the issue of contaminated drinking water found in remote Western Australian communities.

Reducing nitrate levels from drinking water in WA Aboriginal Homeland Communities: Testing the viability of Small-Scale reverse osmosis

Files and links (1)

Abstract

Details

Metrics