Ammonia Systems for Water Treatment

Ammonia

Ammonia is used in several areas of water and wastewater treatment, such as pH control, in solution form to regenerate weak anion exchange resins, in conjunction with chlorine to produce potable water, and as an oxygen scavenger in boiler water treatment.

Acid Neutralization Uses:

Petroleum Refining
Metallurgical Mining Operations
Chemical Processing
Wet Battery manufacturing and Rebuilding operations

On an industrial scale is usually accomplished by the treatment of acidic solutions by the manual or automated addition of a basic (alkaline) compound.

Anhydrous Ammonia is a strong base and is added to acidic solutions as vapor or liquid.

Advantages of Ammonia in Acid Neutralization

Ammonia adds no additional salts to a solution, eliminating solid precipitates and sludge that must be handled as bulk wastes and can become very costly.
Ammonia can be used in various other processes in the plant.
Ammonia provides fast neutralization.
Fast neutralization allows more accurate control and less waste.
Minimum equipment requirement.
Minimum handling and labor requirement.
Minimum maintenance due to reduced corrosion to valves, piping and controls.
Minimum space requirement for total system.

Equipment for Acid Neutralization when using Ammonia

A manual system with a portable pH meter can be installed if neutralization is done on a batch basis.
More complex automated systems can be designed and built to meet the requirements of the situation.
Systems can be designed and installed utilizing cylinder manifolds or bulk ammonia systems.

Liquid vs. Vapor Ammonia for Acid Neutralization

Liquid ammonia is used for acid neutralization systems that require large quantities of ammonia over a short period of time.
Vapor is limited due to the rate of liquid ammonia vaporization. However, the installation of a vaporizer can aid in maintaining the vapor withdrawal rate.

Applications

Potable water treatment
Disinfection of new or repaired mains, tanks, reservoirs and wells.

PH Control

Ammonia is used to increase pH in Pharmaceutical, Ore Flotation & Food Industries.

Anhydrous Ammonia for Acid Mine Drainage

Ammonia is commonly used as a neutralizing agent for acid discharges associated with coal mining. The continuous treatment method is used where vapor is injected at the entrance channel to the pond where it is evenly dispersed into the pond.

Advantages

Ammonia is a very cost effective and an operationally efficient chemical.

The rapid and complete reaction of ammonia with water makes accurate feed control possible resulting in minimal waste.

Ammonia's flexibility to be added as a vapor or liquid is a great advantage for plants that wash several different seams of coal where each has a different effect on pH control.

Equipment

ASME Code Storage Tank - for ammonia storage
Steel Pipe Lines - to prevent corrosion in the lines. Ammonia is incompatible and corrosive with many other metals.
Needle Valve - for feed control.
Check Valve - to prevent water from coming back in the line and contaminating the storage system.
Vaporizer - is needed in winter weather when the surrounding air is cold causing pressure to drop in the tank, decreasing the vapor withdrawal rate. The vaporizer will heat the liquid ammonia changing it to vapor, maintaining the vapor feed rate.
Proportioning Valve and Proportioning pH Controller - allows control of feed rate when gradual changes occur in water flow rate.
pH Probe - a built-in safeguard that shuts down the system preventing excessive amounts of ammonia discharging into the receiving stream if pH reaches the high set point.

Water Chlorination Process

Water Chlorination is a waste-water treatment process that uses continuous chlorine treatment to achieve high standards of bacteriological quality and improvement in other water treatment processes.

Chlorine Ammonia Treatment

Chlorine is added to water containing natural or added ammonia. The ammonia reacts with the HOCl to form various chloramines that retain the oxidizing power of the chlorine.
It is used in the water disinfection process to destroy harmful and "nuisance" organisms, including disease producing, pathogenic organisms.
The combination of chlorine and ammonia produce a more stable disinfecting residual than chlorine alone.