Liquid purification or separation – With means to add treating material – With distinct reactor tank – trough or compartment
Reexamination Certificate
1998-11-06
2001-03-13
Simmons, David A. (Department: 1724)
Liquid purification or separation
With means to add treating material
With distinct reactor tank, trough or compartment
C210S241000, C137S899000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06200473
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to water treatment apparatus. More particularly, this invention relates to a portable water treatment apparatus for use in the transport of drinking water and aqua culture product transport.
2. Background
Recently, the bottled water market has experienced a surge in sales. This may be due to both a more limited availability of potable water and a desire among consumers to drink water which has not been treated with chemicals such as chlorine and fluoride. Besides the bottled water market, it is also often necessary to deliver potable water to a remote location when it is not otherwise available. Regardless of the reasons, the transport of fresh water from its source to a bottling plant or storage facility is necessary.
In addition to the transport need, regulatory agencies require that fresh water be treated to remove organic contaminants. To date, this has required a water treatment plant to be installed either at the water source or at the bottling plant, usually at the bottling plant because of cost concerns. The water treatment plants have traditionally used sanitation processes such as chemical treatments and ultraviolet irradiation to sanitize the water. More recently, ozonation of water has been implemented in treatment plants which results in the complete sterilization of the water leaving only residual ozone, carbon and non-organics in the water as opposed to sanitation which reduces microbial activity down to trace levels. Bottlers and packagers of water regularly require sanitation of the tanker trucks to reduce contamination build-up and cross-contamination risks, realizing that sterilization has heretofore been impracticable.
One of the most effective methods for treatment of water involves the controlled mixing of ozone into the water. An excellent explanation of this treatment process appears in the November 1988 issue of UltraPure Water® entitled Microbial Control-Ozone, The Process Water Sterilant. Several United States patents deal with treating water with ozone. Examples of these patents include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,959,142, 4,963,269 and 4,906,358. In particular, U.S. Pat. No. 4,959,142 discloses a water treating apparatus having a circulating type water pipe for removing the water from the tank, treating the water with ozone, filtering the water, and he treating the water with ultraviolet radiation and subsequently returning the water to the tank.
At least one attempt has been made to install a portable ozonator on a water tanker to treat the water while the water is in transit, however, this attempt was unsuccessful. The problem stems from the limited availability of power and resources on a vehicle.
FIG. 1
labeled PRIOR ART illustrates the apparatus of the prior attempt. The prior attempt used bottled oxygen O2 in combination with a portable generator G powered ozone generator O3 bubbled trough a baffle tube T in the tank to treat the water in transit. It was found that the system was incapable of generating any residual ozone within the treated water as is required by the bottler, which meant that the water had to be re-treated at the plant. Prior to the present invention, it was thought to be impracticable, if not impossible, to provide in transit ozonation of water as the relatively short transit times required too much power to support the high rate of ozonation required to treat the quantity of water within the limited amount of time.
When transporting aqua culture livestock it is necessary to oxygenate the water in the tanker in order to insure the viability of livestock. Additionally, after transporting a load of aqua culture livestock, it is necessary to sanitize the tanker to prevent cross contamination should a load of livestock contained diseased stock or an element which may be incompatible with a different load of livestock. Heretofore, this has required the truck operator to chemically treat the tank between loads by adding chemical agents to relatively clean water introduced into the tank after the load of livestock has been unloaded. Unfortunately, this only results in the tank being sanitized and not sterilized.
What is needed is a water tanker which is capable of treating water for drinking purposes during transit to eliminate the need for pre-treatment or post treatment. Additionally what is needed is a water tanker capable of aqua culture livestock transport which can oxygenate the water in the tanker during transport and sterilize the tank after the livestock has been unloaded.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The invention solves foregoing needs as well as providing other advantages by the combination of a water tanker and a water treatment system containing an oyxgen generator, an ozone generator and a tank mixing eductor. At least the ozone generator is supported by an air suspension system which is specifically designed to eliminate vibration which may otherwise damage the ozone generator. A pump recirculates water from the tank, through an ozone injector and back in to the tank through the mixing eductor.
An oxygen generator provides mostly pure oxygen to the ozone generator. The ozone generator produces ozone and injects this ozone into the water circulation loop through a venturi injector. The resulting ozone rich water is mixed back into the tank through the eductor.
The primary limiting factors are available power and available treatment time. The pump, oxygen generator and ozone generator all require power. An efficient thirty gallons-per-minute pump (0.5 gallons-per-second) consumes approximately 1250 watts of power. It would take this pump almost four hours to pump 7000 gallons of water, approximately one tankers worth of water. Frequently, total transit times are much less, sometimes less than an hour. This limiting factor alone would require the water to remain in the treating tanker for additional three hours pre or post-transit, making it more efficient to simply treat the water at the bottling or storage plant.
The invention solves this problem by reducing the treatment time down to less than an hour, depending upon the level of biological activity in the water. The invention can treat approximately 10,800 gallons in a single hour, resulting in sterilized water having residual ozone counts in the 0.1 to 0.5 parts-per-million range, which is the currently acceptable range. The invention accomplishes this by a combination of an oversized alternator on the vehicle, additional storage batteries, an inverter, an efficient oxygen generator, an efficient and relatively low output ozone generator, a venturi type in-line injector and a mixing eductor within the tank. The combination of the low power consumption components and the mixing edutor are one an important part of the invention. In one embodiment, the mixing eductor has a five to one mixing ratio of treated water to tank water. This means that for every single gallon of water pumped by the ozone injector, five additional gallons are treated in the tank. Essentially, the use of the eductor multiples the treating efficiency by a factor of six.
The invention is capable of operating in two different distinct modes, a water purification mode in which the water is sterilized by ozone and a water oxygenation mode in which oxygen is introduced into the water to support livestock. The water oxygenation mode is accomplished by simply disabling the ozone generator and allowing the oxygen from the oxygen generator to pass through the disabled ozone generator and injected into the water circulation loop. Once the livestock has been unloaded, the tank can be sterilized by filling the tank with relatively clean water and treating it with ozone.
An alternative embodiment eliminates ozone generator
12
altogether and uses a larger oxygen generator
13
. This embodiment forfeits the sterilization feature of the previous embodiment but allows more complete oxygenation of the water for livestock transport as more power is available for the oxygen generation function.
Additional advantages and novel features of the in
Korfanta Craig M.
Lawrence Frank M.
Simmons David A.
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