Drinking water from the beautiful blue Danube
The Landeswasserversorgung withdraws about 30 million cubic metres of water from the Danube annually. The water is changed to drinking water of the highest quality in the Langenau Waterworks over a six-stage process. In times of low ground water levels, water extraction from the river becomes particularly important, even though less than one percent of the flow conditions of the Danube is used for drinking water supply. As the water extraction system is located near Leipheim in Bavaria, water extraction and compensatory services are regulated in an agreement.
- The raw water pumping station near Leipheim
How does water from the Danube become pure drinking water?
The systems for extracting drinking water from the river water of the Danube individually consist of a raw water pumping station, which takes water directly from the river, pressure mains from the pumping station to the Langenau Waterworks and the treatment plants in the waterworks. At peak periods, up to 2300 litres of water from the Danube can be processed into drinking water per second.
The process of extracting drinking water from the Danube has been explored and optimised over many years of testing. It basically consists of the following process steps:
- Pre-treatment plant 1 (compact flocculation plant) for the removal of clouding and humic material from the river water
- Pre-treatment plant 2 for the removal of residual clouding material
- Ozone plant for oxidative removal of flavours and odorous substances and for the disinfection of the water
- Flocculation filtering via dual-layer filter (hydroanthracite, sand) for the removal of residual suspended substances
- Activated carbon filtering plant for the removal of the smallest particles of organic contaminants
- Disinfection of the drinking water with chlorine dioxide for the removal of the risk of microbial recontamination of the drinking water on the way to the customer
Process diagram of treatment at the Langenau Waterworks
Click to enlarge