Well water sulfur and tannin problem

[CRB]

Folks,

New house and two new wells. Typical for my regi;on in Florida I could go shallow around 80' to get no sulfur but a lot of iron or 100+ and get sulfur but no iron. I went for the latter at about 150'. My well water is turning out to be a challenge. Hardness is 10 gr/gal, Sulfide is 1 ppm, tannin is about .5 ppm based on color I'm waiting for lab test result, pH is 7.3. Hardness was easy to address with a standard cation exchange resin to less than 1 gr/gal. The rest isn't so successful. Here's my status and questions:

• Sulfur drops by 90% to .1 ppm. Unfortunately, this still has a distinct sulfur odor. I'm using air injection with a standard Fleck 5600 sxt control head and catalytic carbon. Is 90% reduction all I can expect? If so, will a second unit get the same % reduction that may then yield undetectable level? What else can I try if that's not the case. I had planned on Katalox previously but it was impossible to find and most people around here use standard catalytic carbon. Any other choices other than more difficult/costly peroxide pre-treatment?
• Tannin level is TBD but based on color (very light yellow, not brown or red). Iron level is not detectable. Just to be sure it's not iron I treated a sample with Iron Out and had no impact. The tannin also has a little bit of a musty odor that doesn't help.

Any help is much appreciated.

Chris

 

[Valveman]

Will move to the Softener Forum where you should get more help.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[ditttohead]

Many options available. Ozone injection is a simple solution assuming you have a 40/60 well design (pump, pressure tank, 40/60 switch). H2o2 injection, chlorine injection etc are all options. It depends on how good you want your water and how much money you have to spend on this issue.

 

[CRB]

Dittohead,

Thanks for the reply. I have a peroxide injection system that should deliver next week. My question was really about expected performance for an AIO system with catalytic carbon. Is 90% to be expected at 1 ppm sulfide? I see them advertised all the time for "up to 7 ppm". Of course I never see how much removal to expect. Which system would you say it best and is there a direct ozone injection system?

Thanks.

Chris

 

[CRB]

We finally figured this one out! Took hydrogen peroxide injection, air injection catalytic carbon, a mixed bed softener with cationic and anionic resin. Here's the entire update:

Just to recap where I've been on the well water treatment:

• We have moderately hard water (10 gr/gal), pH 7.6, sulfides ~1ppm, tannin ~.5ppm, no iron. Water stinks to high heaven, and is light yellowish.
• Started with a sort of "locally standard" system that is a cationic resin softener and salt regen plus air injection. Product water is reduced in sulfur (~.1 ppm sulfide) and light yellow.
• So I added H202 injection. This eliminated sulfur but color remains "not pleasant". Also seems we get a "slug of sulfur" each morning. Then sulfur clears up but water smells musty throughout the day.

I've read that tannin content is harmless (tannin is what make tea its color). Tannin is also removed similar to hardness except the charge is opposite to the normal calcium, potassium and manganese so it needs an anionic resin. Purolite 850 resin is typically used for this purpose. At my levels I would need about 10 lb of this resin and I could add this to the cylinder containing the normal resin used to reduce hardness. There are a LOT of opinions on how to do this. Some say you shouldn't mix resins and especially add this on top of the normal cationic resin since anionic resin does not stand up to hardness very well. Others say it works fine and they've done this for years. So I decided to try adding just to see what happens. I removed the softener cylinder and removed the head. After removing the head the collection tube pulled away from the bottom. So after I dumped most of the water out I swirled the resin while wiggling the tube back into place in center of tube. Then covered it with painter's tape and added 10 lb of new anionic resin through a resin funnel. Reassembled it and wow! It worked great! Water produced is absolutely identical to bottled water through clear glass on a white piece of paper in very strong lighting. Tannins also give water a musty odor - that's gone now. So next will be to see how long this lasts and to check to see if I need to regenerate more often. But at least for today for the first time since we've been in this new house with new wells we have great tasting crystal clear water! No more yellow toilet bowls that look like kids forgot to flush. Back to "Happy Wife"!!

I hope this information is helpful and let me know if you need more details.

Chris

 

[Royerm]

CRB..
I know this thread is old but i'll take a chance.
Has adding Purolite A850 did the the job for some time????
Regards