Peat treatment observations

[Moi_Eater]

Hi, I just wanted to post some observations I made when treating with peat. I have a 30 gallon trash can of aged tap water that I mixed in about 5 gallons of water that I had sitting in a bucket with a few handfuls of peat. I then used Mark Burningham's setup for peat treatment on some of the water from the trash can. I treated two 3-gallon buckets with the same peat.

These are the results I got after testing with my new Hanna Combo meter from Randal Bogathy:

Tapwater pH 8.2 TDS 76 ppm

Aged tapwater/Partial peat treated water pH 7.9 TDS 82 ppm

Peat-treated water (1st bucket) pH 5.1 TDS 116 ppm

Peat-treated water (2nd bucket) pH 5.6 TDS 52 ppm

The difference between the two treatments is very interesting. The first treatment is only 0.5 units lower in pH, but has twice the TDS of the second treatment. It seems that the peat adds to the TDS a little when first used, but as you use it more it starts to reduce the TDS.

If anyone has any comments or their own observations please respond.

 

[Neil]

Sam,
Were both of the buckets treated for the same amount of time with the same amount of peat? And were they both straight RO water?
Neil

 

[Moi_Eater]

Neil,
Both buckets were were treated with the exact same peat.

Mark's method is to use a bucket with a 8-10mm hole drilled in the bottom, with a 2-3 inch layer of filter floss on the bottom and topped with peat until the bucket is approximately 3/4 full. You then pour some warm/hot water through to saturate the peat and rinse it a bit. Now it is ready for the water you need to treat. You just suspend it over a container to catch the water and then pour the water you want treated into the bucket until it is full. The water will slowly drain through the hole into the catch container. Just keep adding water until your container is filled with peat-treated water.

That was what I did using two 3-gallon buckets as my catch containers. The water I used was the Aged tapwater/Partially peat-treated water mix (pH 7.9 TDS 82ppm) that I have listed in the first post.

So the water source was the same and I left the same peat in the treatment bucket. I just poured water through till I filled the first catch bucket, then I moved the treatment bucket over the second catch bucket and poured water through until I filled that bucket. That's why I think the difference between the water in the two buckets is very interesting.

 

[Moi_Eater]

Here is an update to my experiment. I used the same method of treatment with new peat and also retested them after aeration.

For all treatments I used aged tapwater with the following parameters:

pH 8.29 TDS 79 ppm

I treated 4 buckets and the results were:

1st bucket - pH 5.62 TDS 177 ppm (original pH reduced by 2.67, TDS increased by 98 ppm)

2nd bucket - pH 4.89 TDS 67 ppm (original pH reduced by 3.40, TDS decreased by 12 ppm)

3rd bucket - pH 5.59 TDS 35 ppm (original pH reduced by 2.70, TDS decreased by 44 ppm)

4th bucket - pH 5.50 TDS 35 ppm (original pH reduced by 2.79, TDS decreased by 44 ppm)

As you can see there in an interesting increase in TDS in the 1st treatment, then it is almost equal to the source water in the 2nd treatment. In the 3rd and 4th treatments the TDS is less than half of the original aged tapwater. Also the pH is affected the most in the second treatment.

I then aerated the water in buckets 2, 3, 4 and retested:

2nd bucket - pH 5.41 TDS 65 ppm (pH increase of 0.52)

3rd bucket - pH 6.32 TDS 34 ppm (pH increase of 0.73)

4th bucket - pH 6.77 TDS 33 ppm (pH increase of 1.27)

The pH increased after aeration in all cases while there was no significant change in TDS. I will try re-treating the treated water to see how much more the pH and/or TDS can be reduced.