What's the Difference Between Water Clarification and Water Disinfection?
Every day, a little miracle happens in your household. Water comes through your pipes clear and safe to drink without boiling. This is the result of water treatment processes that clarify and then disinfect the water supply.
What’s the difference between water clarification and disinfection? Do you need to do one to accomplish the other? What are the water treatment methods we use for each? In this blog, we’ll distinguish the difference between the two and explore the benefits of water treatment online training.
Water Clarification vs Disinfection
Water clarification and disinfection are separate but related steps in the water treatment process.
Water clarification comes first. Just as it sounds, the purpose is to remove any turbidity or cloudiness from the water supply, which involves removing dissolved, suspended, and settleable solids.
Water disinfection eliminates any pathogenic microorganisms from the water by removing, deactivating, or killing them. This reduces the rate of waterborne disease and makes your drinking water safe to consume right out of the tap.
The Importance of Clear Water
It’s not strictly necessary to clarify water before disinfecting it, which is why, in an emergency situation, cities may choose to disinfect the water supply without clarifying it.
So, if it’s not necessary for public health, why do we bother with that step at all? What is clear water’s importance?
First of all, removing suspended solids from the water supply increases the efficiency of disinfection. Suspended or settled particles can serve as nutrients for pathogens and shelter them from disinfecting agents.
Secondly, water clarification improves the taste and smell of the water.
Understanding Water Clarification
There are several technologies that can be used to clarify water, including settling tanks and various types of filtration. These are fairly intuitive – you allow large particles to settle out of the water using time and gravity, then run the water through a filter to remove some of the remaining matter.
However, the first step is usually chemical coagulation, which helps make the water contaminants large enough to settle or filter. Dirt and other dissolved particles typically carry a negative charge, which is what keeps them from dissolving into the water. During coagulation, positively charged chemicals like salt, aluminum, or iron are added to the water to bind them and make slightly larger particles.
Role of Disinfection in Water Safety
Throughout history, waterborne pathogens have been a major source of illness and death, and as we built cities, the dense population made the problem worse. For example, cholera outbreaks were rare and small until communities reached a certain size. Then, suddenly, they were frequent and deadly.
Disinfection for water safety has all but eliminated waterborne disease in areas with reliable water treatment.
Exploring Water Disinfection Methods
The filtration steps of water clarification also serve to filter out some pathogenic organisms, but additional steps are needed to make drinking water reliably safe.
Chlorination is one of the most common disinfection methods because it’s simple, long-lasting, and 99% effective against a wide range of microorganisms. Chlorine is an oxidizing agent that disinfects by destroying the cell structure of microorganisms. Its lingering effect means that it will also kill any microorganisms that are introduced in the pipes between the treatment plant and your faucet.
Other disinfection technologies include UV radiation, ozonation, pasteurization, and non-oxidizing chemical agents that prevent microorganisms from reproducing.
Water Treatment Training
Interested in the water treatment industry?
Water treatment certification is an important first step in your career as a water treatment operator. We offer online, self-paced water treatment courses that explore water clarification, water disinfection, and the various water treatment methods used in the industry. You’ll be able to study wherever and whenever it’s convenient for you.
