Remove nickel in drinking water down to 0 µg/L with ion exchangers

Nickel in drinking water is an increasing challenge for municipal drinking water suppliers, as it is not easy to remove using standardized methods.

With regard to well water contamination with nickel (Ni), an established solution compliant with §11 of the German Drinking Water Ordinance (TrinkwV) Part 1b) No. 26 has now been developed: the removal of nickel in drinking water using a special IDE ion exchanger(selective exchanger) for external ion exchanger regeneration. In this process, the nickel in the water is removed by the ion exchanger within its capacity . In addition to removing nickel from tap water, other bivalent cations such as lead are also filtered. However, the ion exchanger does not act as a filter in this process, but also releases something back into the water for the bound bivalent cations, usually sodium and calcium.

At 4 municipal drinking water suppliers (as of 2022) in our customer base, the feed is purified from a few l/h with small ion exchanger cartridges up to 100 m³/h using a separate process with a special IDE selective exchanger. Values of approx. 60 µg/L Ni in the feed can be achieved to approx. 0 – 6 µg/L Ni (limit value: 20 µg/L). The limit value can therefore be safely complied with using this method.

The systems are all designed for external ion exchanger regeneration in order to avoid the regularly undesirable regeneration systems along with waste water treatment required in the water supply. In this process, the ion exchanger cartridges are made transportable and sent to the central ion exchanger regeneration station in 92348 Berg once their capacity has been exhausted. Here, the ion exchangers are regularly regenerated in a special process within around 2 weeks and then returned to the desired form and rinsed. The ion exchangers are then returned to the drinking water supplier via the shipping route.

Further information can be found in this article on one of our systems: Nickel removal_drinking water_gatwat2015-10.pdf (decker-vt.de)

We will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Please do not hesitate to contact us.