Jeremy Harris
Member
OK, I'm a novice at this stuff, and I've spent over a year learning as much as I can about wells and treatment, mainly as they are rare here in England and good advice is really hard to find. I started life as a chemist, so understand the basic oxidation reactions that are used to convert hydrogen sulphide to sulphur that precipitates out and ferrous iron to ferric iron that also precipitates out. This seems to be what all the commercial iron and H2S filter system do, oxidise and then filter out (or just let the precipitates settle out).
I've read a couple of threads on here and looked at the web site, for a venturi air injection device that squirts highly oxygenated water back down the well, which then encourages oxidation in the well itself of H2S and probably ferrous iron ("clear" iron) as well. I've read the mixed views, but nothing seems to indicate that this system doesn't basically work. The downsides seem to be that it uses a small amount of pump water 24/7, so the pump works a tiny bit longer and that the top of the well may get some additional iron and sulphur precipitates, as it injects right at the well head.
This got me thinking. I have an electrical box in my well head chamber (which is what I think you guys may refer to as a "pitless head", a concrete chamber covered with a lid with the well liner sticking up from the base with a cap over where the pipe and cable comes out). This has switched power to it and a water proof connector that connects to the pump cable, to make changing the pump simpler. There's room on the electrical box for a second connector, and the underground feed cable's big enough to supply three or four pumps. There's also some spare room in this chamber, as the 5" well liner comes up near one corner and the chamber is around 18" x 24" internally.
What would happen if I fitted a small air pump, like the quiet sort used for powering an air brush, and connected it to a long length of thin nylon tube with a nozzle on the end, then dropped this tube down well below the pump. If this air pump was then hooked up to the pump feed, every time the borehole pump ran the little air pump would run and oxygenate the water in the well below the pump. My guess is that this would do the same thing as the Sulfur Eliminator, by oxidising the H2S, and maybe the ferrous iron.
In my case my pump is about 60ft below the rest water level, and around 70ft below the surface, so if I ran the nylon hose down to, say, 80ft then I'd need a pressure of around 40psi minimum to get air to trickle out, maybe 50 psi to get loads of very fine bubbles out of something like an aquarium air stone or a very fine nozzle, as really fine bubbles would be needed to get most of them to dissolve in the water and not get sucked into the pump. This sounds achievable, as the small air brush type air pumps chuck out around 60 psi and cost around £60 (~$90?). If it works it seems a lot cheaper than the Sulfur Eliminator for something that would seem to do the same sort of job, oxidise water in the well.
One downside is that some of the precipitate is going to go down the well, but a fair bit may well get sucked up by the pump, as the reaction is a fairly slow one and much of it may well happen in the pipe from the pump to the pressure tank, and inside the pressure tank. This would be helped because the air pump would only be running when the borehole pump is running, so most precipitate is going to form whilst water is being sucked into the pump. A filter would be needed to catch this, but in my case I have one anyway, so all I'd be doing is reducing the oxidising load on it, by making sure it was always fed with pretty well oxygenated water, which would help the media last, I think. I'm already doing this with my break tank (discussed in this thread: https://terrylove.com/forums/index....dvice-please-borehole-supply-in-the-uk.61806/).
Am I crazy for thinking this might work? Feel free to call me a nutter if this is a crazy idea, I'm British, so used to being viewed as eccentric.................
I've read a couple of threads on here and looked at the web site, for a venturi air injection device that squirts highly oxygenated water back down the well, which then encourages oxidation in the well itself of H2S and probably ferrous iron ("clear" iron) as well. I've read the mixed views, but nothing seems to indicate that this system doesn't basically work. The downsides seem to be that it uses a small amount of pump water 24/7, so the pump works a tiny bit longer and that the top of the well may get some additional iron and sulphur precipitates, as it injects right at the well head.
This got me thinking. I have an electrical box in my well head chamber (which is what I think you guys may refer to as a "pitless head", a concrete chamber covered with a lid with the well liner sticking up from the base with a cap over where the pipe and cable comes out). This has switched power to it and a water proof connector that connects to the pump cable, to make changing the pump simpler. There's room on the electrical box for a second connector, and the underground feed cable's big enough to supply three or four pumps. There's also some spare room in this chamber, as the 5" well liner comes up near one corner and the chamber is around 18" x 24" internally.
What would happen if I fitted a small air pump, like the quiet sort used for powering an air brush, and connected it to a long length of thin nylon tube with a nozzle on the end, then dropped this tube down well below the pump. If this air pump was then hooked up to the pump feed, every time the borehole pump ran the little air pump would run and oxygenate the water in the well below the pump. My guess is that this would do the same thing as the Sulfur Eliminator, by oxidising the H2S, and maybe the ferrous iron.
In my case my pump is about 60ft below the rest water level, and around 70ft below the surface, so if I ran the nylon hose down to, say, 80ft then I'd need a pressure of around 40psi minimum to get air to trickle out, maybe 50 psi to get loads of very fine bubbles out of something like an aquarium air stone or a very fine nozzle, as really fine bubbles would be needed to get most of them to dissolve in the water and not get sucked into the pump. This sounds achievable, as the small air brush type air pumps chuck out around 60 psi and cost around £60 (~$90?). If it works it seems a lot cheaper than the Sulfur Eliminator for something that would seem to do the same sort of job, oxidise water in the well.
One downside is that some of the precipitate is going to go down the well, but a fair bit may well get sucked up by the pump, as the reaction is a fairly slow one and much of it may well happen in the pipe from the pump to the pressure tank, and inside the pressure tank. This would be helped because the air pump would only be running when the borehole pump is running, so most precipitate is going to form whilst water is being sucked into the pump. A filter would be needed to catch this, but in my case I have one anyway, so all I'd be doing is reducing the oxidising load on it, by making sure it was always fed with pretty well oxygenated water, which would help the media last, I think. I'm already doing this with my break tank (discussed in this thread: https://terrylove.com/forums/index....dvice-please-borehole-supply-in-the-uk.61806/).
Am I crazy for thinking this might work? Feel free to call me a nutter if this is a crazy idea, I'm British, so used to being viewed as eccentric.................
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