Book Description

Abstract Almost all towns in the Ostrobothnic region supply their drinking water from the groundwater. As a consequence, the purification of underground water, to use it as drinking water is very important in this region. The hard climate in the region seriously limits the options for purification of the needed water. In the last ten years, a lot of work has been done in the field of water purification and distribution in this region. The quality of the underground water in the region is high, the only problems being high manganese and iron concentrations and sometimes high humus concentrations. Manganese is one out of three toxic essential trace elements, which means that it is not only necessary for humans to survive, but it is also toxic when too high concentrations are present in a human body. In addition to that, both iron and manganese give an unpleasant metallic taste to the water. The subject for this research project was chosen because pure drinking water is very important. There are countless possible methods to remove manganese and iron from water. It seemed like a good idea to test some of them, to see if the water purification system in this region could be further optimised. Most information on this issue was gathered from and international research program, to investigate future options and co-operation possibilities between the different Barents regions, in relation to drinking water production. In addition to that, most of the information on the current purification technique was found on the internet. For the project a number of samples will be taken from a purification facility. After the samples are taken, measurements will be done to determine the amounts of iron and manganese in every step of the purification process. When this determination is done, the samples will be subjugated to a number of experimental treatments. For this research project, the samples will be taken from the Kempele water purification facility. Good results were found after tests with a perchlorate or a hypochlorite treatment. These products seem to be able to remove the manganese rather fast from a water sample. Also, good results were achieved with a potassium hydroxide treatment. Towards the future, more research is required to see if these methods are also efficient in large scale situations. Also, some other treatments are advised to be researched, which were currently not possible due to limitations in the laboratory.