Iron Removal and Your Drinking Water
Iron is one of many minerals that are essential for your health. Without iron, people may experience anemia, fatigue, or an increase in infections. However, excessive iron in drinking water can have negative effect such as poor skin, iron overload, plumbing issues and poor water taste. So while normal levels of iron in drinking water won’t have a negative impact on your health, too much iron will do harm. If you are noticing any signs of iron in your drinking water Kinetico has state of the art iron removal systems for residential and commercial water.
Iron Removal
The most common forms of iron contamination in the Northwest are ferrous (dissolved invisible iron), ferric (visible iron), and colloidal organic iron.
Ferrous Iron Removal
Invisible/ferrous iron removal can be accomplished with a water softener or an iron filtration system. If you have crystal clear water with a low pH and low alkalinity, up to 3-4 parts per million of invisible iron can be removed with a water softener. If you do not want soft water, invisible iron can be removed with an iron filter.
Ferric Iron Removal
Visible/ferric iron removal can be accomplished with an iron filtration system. In most cases, when visible iron is present, there is also a quantity of invisible iron present as well. The process the iron filter uses is to oxidize any invisible iron to make it a visible particle, so it can be trapped and removed along with the existing visible iron.
Colloidal Organic Iron Removal
Colloidal organic iron is formed when invisible iron bonds with an organic material such as tannins or phosphates and remains too small to be filtered out by standard iron filtration methods. Removal systems include coagulant injection systems and ultra-filtration.
Choosing the right equipment to remove iron
Care must be taken when considering iron removal systems as there are many factors to consider. Water temperature, pH, alkalinity, dissolved oxygen content, and other factors will affect the results of the equipment you choose. Most application failures are caused simply by mis-diagnosing the type of iron in the water, which leads to the wrong kind of equipment being used.