All You Need to Know About Natural Water Treatment Methods

Natural water treatment methods involve the use of water quality enhancement systems that take advantage of the natural environment. The use of natural environment to improve water quality has been in use for several centuries. For instance, humans discovered through experience that the passage of water through soil can be an excellent filtration system. The method imparts several additional advantages to the water obtained.

Despite its ancient origins, the use of natural water treatment systems is essential and remains relevant in the modern world now more than ever. The human population is on the rise at an astronomical scale. This makes it harder to access purified water, and the associated expenses used in the enhancement of water are equally on the rise.

The natural water treatment methods hardly use any electricity to attain water clarification goals. Only the chemical, biological and physical processes in nature help facilitate the treatment process.

Use of Solar energy: Takes advantage of the sunlight, and is especially viable in areas characterized with high solar intensities. In its natural form, the ultraviolet rays from sunlight kill the toxic pathogens. The heat from solar energy source is also useful in destroying the pathogens.

Thermal energy: The thermal energy can especially be obtained from solar power. Energy, often in form of heat, leads to the eradication of the toxic disease-causing pathogens. One of the more common means of water purification is subjecting water to boiling point for about a minute.

Adsorption of impurities. Certain elements in nature have the ability to attract other elements towards themselves. This process is known as adsorption and has found popularity in several industries including the water treatment industry. Furthermore, the method is one of the ways through which the natural treatment systems remove the toxic elements from raw water.

Solid Settlement: This is probably the easiest and the most common method of water treatment. This method involves allowing a volume of liquid with suspended particles to sit still. The action of gravity will cause several particles to settle at the bottom. The simplicity of this method is its undoing since it does not lead to the removal of dissolved substances, heavy metals and toxic chemicals. However, when turbidity is the only cause for concern and no other treatment method is available, this method is highly recommended.

Bio-degradation This method takes advantage of the activity of microorganisms in the natural environment to breakdown the organic matter that might be present in water. This imparts several benefits to the treated water including elimination of odor, taste and color especially if these undesirable properties are the result of organic matter. An example of this process is the bioremediation in water treatment.

Natural Filtration systems Filtration is a time-tested method of obtaining clean water. The method has a relative superiority over the other natural water treatment processes. This is because water filtration systems, especially in the natural environment, have the ability to employ different water treatment mechanisms to achieve water purity.

The natural treatment methodologies take advantage of the biochemical and physical properties found in the soil strata that help in the elimination of the toxic qualities in water. Research and various case studies of natural water treatment mechanisms have shown that water treated in this manner has a far greater stability as compared to the ones from most conventional water treatment schemes.  This stability is akin to the use of residual chemical disinfectants in the water to prevent any unwanted reinfections within the water in the distribution systems.

Managed acquirer recharge involves the use of various methods to intentionally add water to aquifers. This method often mimics the natural systems through which aquifers gain and store water through precipitation. This technique is especially important in regions in which the abstraction of groundwater is relatively higher than the natural recharge rates. The technique, which might also be referred to as water banking, ultimately provides the much-needed water for use during the dry months.

Based on the principle, numerous variations of natural water treatment have been successfully applied in various localities. Some of the more common applications of this principle include:

• Bank Filtration
• Artificial aquifer recharge and recovery System
• Underground Water Treatment System

• Applicable in treating waste water. Natural systems are not only applicable to potable water treatment but are also useful in some places in the treatment of waste water.
• Sustainability. The growing interest in the utilization of these natural treatment systems is due to the fact that a properly designed system is sustainable. Apart from ease of operation of the properly designed natural systems, it is also possible to eliminate a wide range of contaminants from raw water.
• Presence of self-stabilizing quality. Water that has undergone the natural processes is highly likely to maintain its purity even without the need to add stabilizers.

• Most natural treatment systems are slower in operation compared to conventional treatment systems. This might make them inefficient when vast volumes of water are needed than the system can supply.
• The artificial modification of the natural environment to provide water to meet great municipal demands is costly.
• The effectiveness of a chosen method is site specific.

The conditions pertaining to the natural treatment process play a major role in the effectiveness of the process. These conditions can vary from environmental factors to the intrinsic factors in the design of the process. The factors affecting the operation of natural water treatment include:

The location in question. Despite the many potential benefits of the natural systems, the quality of the water gained from such processes vary depending on various factors. One of the major factors involved is the locality. Different locations have unique chemical and physical characteristics that would in turn affect the water. The hydro-geological trait of a treatment site relates to the hydrological environment as well as the geological aspect of the soil. Soils should be balanced such that the flow rate of the raw water permit the removal of the unwanted constituents from the water while imparting beneficial qualities to it. Thus, either too low or too high movement of the water are counterproductive.

The quality of the raw water is another important consideration that affects the overall efficiency of the natural water treatment system. Raw water, that is only slightly contaminated or one that contains only suspended matter is likely to be fully clarified by the natural treatment systems. However, raw water that has significant amounts of dissolved matter may not fully benefit from the treatment system.

The goals of the treatment system should also be ascertained beforehand. These include factors such as the desired volume and quality of treatment that needs to be present. Hence, the designers of small treatment setups should not be too ambitious with the final product. This is because there is only so much volume that the systems can produce based on their limits.

The time aspect. Natural treatment systems take up considerable time for the water to flow between through the treatment systems. Thus, this time factor needs to be aligned with the goals of the natural water treatment process of choice.

Natural treatments systems are not only applicable in industrial scale systems but can also be adopted at the small-scale setting to take advantage of processes like sedimentation, filtration, adsorption so as to achieve clean water. The use of several modern systems such as carbon adsorption is simply an application of a natural process that has been used for several years.

One key application of the natural water harvesting techniques is the digging of gypsy wells. This refers to a small hole that allows water to percolate. This hole has proven to be a lifesaver to both humans and animals especially during dry areas or during prolonged famine.

Water treatment through use of natural solution is a century old practice that still has promise in the modern water treatment. In the current world, there exist many water treatments sites that still use technologies such as bank filtration without any need for additional conventional treatment methods. Nevertheless, the incorporation of such conventional treatment techniques into natural treatment procedures is sure to lead to increased efficiency and greater economic value. A successful operation requires the that proper investigation of the area is taken to ascertain the geologic and hydrologic information prior to undertaking a natural water abstraction program.