Removing salt and chlorine from water

[broncobowsher]

There is no cost effective way to remove salt. I live in the desert, the city sold the water works to a for profit water company. I guarantee my water bill is higher than yours. My rinse water goes down my drain. Maybe into the yard if it is a nice day and I rinse outside.

Take your "used" water and use it to flush a toilet bowl if you want to be cheap about it. There is more than just salt and Chlorine that you are rinsing off.

 

[Storker]

Leave the water in a vented sump a while and the chlorine will dissapate.

Not effective. The chlorine is there partly as hypochorite, which isn't volatile. It'll take a loooong time.

Then, for the salt, you are looking into a still, reverse osmosis, or maybe Scientists discover a game-changing way to remove salt from water if it works. I think any will make your water bill look cheap.

Ion exchange resins work. But they ain't cheap either, and have to be replaced regularly.

Problem with filters is that the water molecules are larger than the salt ions

RO membranes let water pass, but stop salt ions. They basically allow neutral molecules, but block ions.

But in any case, you need to spend as least as much energy to remove salt from water as the free energy which was lost by mixing the two. In the case of RO, that's pump energy. For seawater, that's pumping against a head of at least 27 atm

 

[Steve_C]

I have a large storage container in the garage. Put in drive. Fill with water. Rinse equipment first. As the last step I add some wetsuit detergent and wash wet suit, dive socks, boots, gloves. Hang to dry in garage. Dump container which then flows into yard. Move stuff out of garage when dry. I will sometimes wash the tank but not to wash the tank. I hook the regs back on a tank, open valve and put all in the container. Let them soak for a while. For freshwater dives I do not worry about regs, tanks, etc.

 

[Bert van den Berg]

Problem with filters is that the water molecules are larger than the salt ions.

Scientists are working on a filter that captures the ions, but you may have to wait ‘till they work out the bugs.

Still may cost more than your water bill.

EDIT:
Noticed you are in New England, capture rainwater and just do single use, you may need a bit more storage. It isn’t like out here where it is normally dry at least a half a year at a time.


Bob

We use an engine driven high pressure CAT pump to force water through a membrane to turn very salty ocean water into fresh water quite inexpensively. The resulting water is so pure you have add minerals or take supplements to prevent the pure water from leaching minerals from your body when you drink it.

 

[Dark Wolf]

You can look at home RO units. The one I looked at was about $340. Filters were good for 1 year/2000 gallons, with a $75 replacement cost.

DW

 

[formernuke]

You can look at home RO units. The one I looked at was about $340. Filters were good for 1 year/2000 gallons, with a $75 replacement cost.

DW

I have one from the fish tank, they waste a lot of water, I could just rerun the discharge though.

 

[agilis]

Reverse osmosis wastes about three gallons of water for every gallon of purified water produced. Ten gallons of RO water requires at least 40 gallons of water consumption.

 

[broncobowsher]

Ignoring the cost of an RO and just looking at the filtering costs, also ignoring the energy to drive the system.
$37 to recover 1000 gallons of water and you still have to scrap 3000 gallons to do so.
You can't just keep running the waste water through the filter, the water has to be clean enough to flush the filters.

It will cost you more money and you will waste more water trying to filter it then if you just throw it down the drain.

 

[M-Cameron]

I would just rinse my gear with a hose like a normal person..... and if you are concerned with the cost of water, just take shorter showers.

by the time you pay for a filtering system, you could have paid for enough water to rinse your gear 1000 times over

 

[Dark Wolf]

Reverse osmosis wastes about three gallons of water for every gallon of purified water produced. Ten gallons of RO water requires at least 40 gallons of water consumption.

I am assuming this depends on the size/quality of the RO unit? And also residential vs commercial.

DW