When present in an elevated concentration, iron turns your tanks, washbasins, and toilets to reddish stains and rusts. Undoubtedly, the extremely high concentration of iron is dangerous for individuals’ skin, hair, or health. Different methods involve removing iron from well water, including cheap natural processes and some expensive filtration equipment. In this article, I am going to explain the Cheapest ways to remove iron from well water.
Regardless of the method of use, you must remove iron due to its harm to persons’ health and utility. Many people apply. Commonly used methods for iron removal are the utilization of charcoal, activated carbon, reverse osmosis filter system, and sedimentation.
How many types of iron are present in well water?
Iron is one of the top 5 abundant minerals present in the earth’s crust. Three types of iron molecules are present in the water sources i-e ferrous, ferric, and bacterial iron.
Disadvantages of High concentration of iron in water
The presence of high iron levels in water is considered harmful for many household appliances including the water filtration system mounted on your kitchen.
How to remove iron from well water.
Normal Concentration of Iron in the drinking water
Environmental protection agency recommends the normal optimal level of iron is 0.3mg/L.
Cost effective methods to remove iron from water
Several options are available to remove the iron from the well water. Does boiling well water removes iron? If you are boiling water molecules, it can kill many bacteria or other pathogenic organisms. Still, dissolved minerals like calcium, lead, iron, and magnesium are hard to remove as they are dissolved in the water. If you need to remove iron from well water, there are some chemicals and some physical methods listed to remove iron from well water.
Aeration
Aeration is the simple procedure in which oxygen atoms have directly entered the water with elevated iron concentration. The oxygen atom binds with the iron and then turns into insoluble ferric oxide easily filtered from the water.
The aeration is helpful to remove extra iron molecules from water, but it can be harmful when the oxygen level exceeds the normal. The plentiful amount of oxygen causes water to corrosive or oxygen saturated.
After all, aeration is advantageous to remove higher iron concentration, but it requires doing it properly. The aeration step requires working effectively if it is carried out for about 20 minutes.
You can perform aeration by multiple methods. In the first method, we introduce oxygen molecules into the water bubbles. The other way is the suspension of water molecules into the air. The porous air stones, cone aerators, and cascade trays are also effective aeration methods.
Reverse Osmosis Filters
The reverse osmosis filters are considered one of the cheapest methods to remove iron from well water due to the fact RO system is helpful to filter the iron molecules from the water providing clean and safe drinking water. The RO membrane effectively removes 99% of the toxic chemicals from water, including iron, zinc, lead, etc.
Sedimentation
Although sedimentation is one of the cheaper methods to remove iron from well water, it is little effective. Sedimentation is a simpler process involving the storage of water in pots, buckets, or tanks. The impurities in water are settled down in the storage, and you can filter the water easily. Sedimentation is a cost-effective but laborious method for removing iron from water.
Activated Charcoal
You can try activated charcoal to limits a lot of chemicals to enter your glass of water. The activated charcoal is present in most of the filter systems and minimizes the chlorines, odors, and chemicals to penetrate the glass of water.
Does the activated carbon remove iron from water?
The dissolved minerals can easily pass through the activated charcoal filter. A filter with a size smaller than 1 micron can remove many chemicals like iron, lead, and other toxic chemicals. Without a doubt activated carbon is very effective in removing iron from well water. Besides that, it helps in water cleaning and filtration.
