Has anyone heard of adding a sand seperator filtertration system to an existing reclaim system? My water guy has suggested this as a way to keep the other filters in the system from clogging so quickly. Allowing for me to get to 5 microns before entering my high pressure pumps.
Sand separation is a good thing but you need to realize that if sand or clay is coming through your usual interceptor system it is most likely full or particles are floating due to the chemicals in the waste water.
Sand separation can be done by using cyclonic separation that is using energy to speed up the gravity separation of particles.
You need to investigate if this is really plugging your filters or if it is bacterial slime that is plugging your filters. If bacteria is sliming up inside filters there is just too much COD (chemical oxygen demand) in you system and you may want to use just aeration to prevent a big part of the sliming. Sand is usually not the problem because of it’s structure and relative high weight it will be separated in the interceptor. First do the investigation before you put in expensive equipment with no results.
If water is getting "slimy" it is the indicator that there is a high COD/BOD (pollution) present.
There are several way’s to solve this problem and the “low cost” solution is to reuse less reclaim water.
Usually reclaim systems running on just filtration will leave the chemicals in the waste water and by reusing this water the volume of chemicals is growing if your reclaim is reusing more than half of your total water consumption. You can reuse water longer if you control the buildup of the chemicals by activating the bacteria, they are causing the slimy experience you have now. So obviously there is enough food for them to work with and you will see them grow as slime. By using aeration you will do two things, one is that you activate the existing bacteria with air, and second you “clean” the system with the bacteria that is “eating” the chemicals out of the waste water. A lot of reclaim systems are using Ozone to kill the bacteria and to reduce the usual odor that is caused by anaerobic bacteria. By using just air you activate the bacteria and in return the now aerobic bacteria is producing clean water and CO˛ (you can not smell that). Basically this is the most natural way of dealing with this problem. For the aeration system you need to contact Tom Gibney tgibney@huronvalleysales.comand if you want to reuse more than 50% you need to install a bio reactor system that will consume ALL chemicals from your waste water. Basically you just need to follow the natural way of dealing with pollution, we know now by painful experience in the Gulf that if humans are doing their thing it is usual leading to disasters.
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