What process is used to remove chemicals from drinking water?
I live in the City of Milwaukee. I read that treated waste water is dumped into Lake Michigan which is also the city’s drinking water supply. Many harmful chemicals such as Drano go down people’s drains. How are chemicals like this removed from waste water and the drains and/or drinking water?
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Hazardous chemicals are not that always.
Example
HCL is a bad acid .
Caustic soda bad base ,very similar to Drano.
When u mix the 2 things together what u have. Let measure it to a PH 7. If the 2 things are balanced and not acid or base .
U will have table salt and water.
This is how Mother Nature does it and the reason all the oceans are salty.
As answer 1 said Draino is not a problem because it has combined with other stuff so that it is not harmful by the time it gets to the waste water plant. The chemicals that are more dangerous are the ones that get into the water from industry. Some that are dissolved as gases are flushed by spraying the water into the air and they are oxidized. Others are gotten out by alum which is put in and it causes things to precipitate out. Before waste water is put into a waterway it is allowed to settle, the sludge is composted( the compost is where many of these heavy metals are now found, so it is not used on fields where food is grown or parks where people play sports,) and the effluent is treated with a chemical to kill germs. Fresh water is let settle, filtered, floridated and chlorine added to kill germs.It may be sprayed into the air to rid it of odors and flavors.
There are different treatment technologies to remove chemiclas from water, Metals are removed by precipitation and pH adjustment, volatile organics are removed by Air stripping ( mixxing the water with air) The air is treated with activated carbon. Biological contamination is taken care of by Chlorine or Ultaviolet Light and sometime assisted by Peroxide.
To treat water for drinking, metals are agin precipitated filtered by sand then carbon, then aerated then florinated