So a customer puts up a new house in the country. Water is supplied by well from an old house that had been on the site. Unfortunately, the well is pushing up some sediment and bacterial contamination.\u00a0 One possible solution is to put in a new, deeper well in the hopes of finding cleaner water.\u00a0 Another, much less expensive solution is to use filtration and harness the power of ozone to purify the water.<\/p>\n
The simplest setup<\/a> includes a Mazzei Venturi which uses the existing water flow to pull ozone into the water stream.\u00a0 A small mixing tank would increase contact time for disinfection before use in the home.<\/p>\n This would be a perfect project for me, the apprentice.\u00a0 I put the system together and brought it out for the install.\u00a0 Having worked in our shop putting together a number of industrial systems, I was confident it would work well.\u00a0 Plumbing was complete.\u00a0 I flipped the pump breaker switch and water began flowing.\u00a0 My balance barometer indicated some suction and the ozone generator light kicked on \u2026. and then it turned off again as the water pressure increased.\u00a0 What was wrong?<\/p>\n A Mazzei Venturi injector<\/a> is at the heart of this system.\u00a0\u00a0 The small plastic Venturis<\/a> we often use are very simple, but the careful and precise design makes them very reliable and effective.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Essentially they use some of the energy from the water flow to create a suction that will pull a gas into the water stream.\u00a0 Two pressure gauges, one before the Venturi and one after the Venturi will demonstrate this loss of energy in the water flow.\u00a0 The lost energy is being used to pull gas into the water stream.\u00a0\u00a0 Injectors need to be built to fit specific water flows and pressure.\u00a0 Your water flow in gpm and pressure requirements will help determine which injector will work.\u00a0 Mazzei has a chart<\/a> for each type of injector that will tell how much gas flow is created for a range of pressures.<\/p>\n So, back to my system install and what was wrong.\u00a0 When I referenced my pressures before and after the injector to the Mazzei chart, I could see that my water flow was insufficient.\u00a0 I tried a smaller injector which improved the range at which suction was created, but it still was not enough to get the ozone I needed in the water.\u00a0 The Mazzei performance chart indicated that the well pump moved about 5 gallons per minute. When the pressure switch on the well pump sensed low water pressure, it turns the pump on.\u00a0 The Venturi worked at first, but as the pressure in the system increased to the point when the pressure switch turned the pump off, the Venturi quit working.\u00a0 So how can I increase the time ozone is injected?<\/p>\n I had an idea.\u00a0 If the Venturi was working better at low pressures, then adjust the pressure switch so that it allowed the water pressure to get lower before it turned on.\u00a0 I adjusted the switch to turn on at 35 psi instead of 45 and the Venturi was able to pull in ozone until it reached 47 psi.\u00a0 The pump continued to pump till the switch turned it off at 75 psi.\u00a0 This water mixed with the ozonated water in the tank.\u00a0 Dissolved ozone measurements indicated adequate concentrations under ideal conditions.\u00a0 But sometimes water use keeps the pump running at a pressure where no ozone is being injected.\u00a0 That simply was not going to work.\u00a0 I left for the day, and got a call the next morning from the customer.\u00a0 The water pressure in the house was not going to work for three teenage girls getting ready for school in the morning.<\/p>\n The well pump was not creating enough flow to make the system work.\u00a0 I needed to add a pump to increase flow.\u00a0 Flow from the well cannot be increased, so the pump would circulate 15 gpm through a loop.\u00a0 \u00a0I turned the pressure switch back up and installed a pump wired to turn on when the well pump turned on.\u00a0\u00a0 I plumbed to pull water at a T from the bottom of the tank where the pressure switch and bladder tank were hooked up and push it through a T where the well water was coming in.<\/p>\n Again I turned on the pump breaker switch.\u00a0 My new pump began to circulate water, balance barometer indicated some suction, ozone generator turned on, \u2026. but only for a while.\u00a0 The system was not working any better than before!\u00a0 And a new problem surfaced: the well pump took longer to turn off because the new pump inlet reduced the pressure at the pressure switch.<\/p>\n After pondering this problem and looking at other system diagrams, it seemed to me that the Venturi should come before the water inlet from the well pump. More plumbing changes. Multiple Venturi size tests. But I still not able to get the flow and pressure differential I needed when the well pump was running. I noticed that if I turned the breaker off for the well pump, I was able to get good suction with just the circulation pump running.<\/p>\n A Venturi will work only if you can maintain a pressure differential between the inlet and the outlet.\u00a0 Even with the well pump adding into the circulation pump outlet, the system configuration was not creating the flow needed through the Venturi.\u00a0 If I understand it correctly, the well pump seemed to be fighting against the circulation pump.<\/p>\n It would be better if the well pump was feeding water into the system just before the circulation pump.\u00a0 This would level the pressure “playing field” across the loop before the circulation pump pulled well water and some water from the mixing tank through the Venturi.\u00a0 Again I flipped the well pump breaker switch.\u00a0 This time the balance barometer showed a healthy level of suction.\u00a0 The ozone generator kicked on.\u00a0 As the pressure increased, the suction reduced but it stayed on until the well pump turned off.\u00a0 This is what I was looking for!\u00a0 Now it was working.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So a customer puts up a new house in the country. Water is supplied by well from an old house that had been on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[211],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ozone-industry-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxidationtech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxidationtech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxidationtech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxidationtech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxidationtech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxidationtech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2576,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxidationtech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859\/revisions\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxidationtech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxidationtech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxidationtech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}