How do you slake the thirst of 5.5 million Chicagoans pass around throughout the country ’s third large metropolis and 118 surrounding suburbs ? You handle one billion gallons of water a solar day at the world ’s turgid water treatment plant .
Opened in 1968 , the James W. Jardine Water Purification Plant leave virtually all of Chicago ’s potable H2O , though the smaller South Water Purification Plant also assist provide for the south remnant of the city . The process start 2.5 miles off shore at monolithic in - flow detail promise cribs . Each crib pull water from 20 feet below the surface down a 168 - substructure perpendicular shaft to tube cut from the basic principle which flow back to the shore . Once it reaches the industrial plant , Pisces the Fishes and other orotund debris are filtered out using a rotate blind and the water is pumped 25 feet up to start the gravitational attraction - power intervention process .
The water is first chemically treat with atomic number 17 to kill bug and activate C to get rid of exceptionable tastes and odors , then fluoride is added for tidy teeth , and finally aluminum sulphate about an hour into the cognitive process to increase the stickiness of microscopic solids which then stick to each other , create floc . enceinte paddle — floculators — assist with the admixture of alum and weewee . One of the very last chemicals add , polyphosphate , is used to coat the inside of Chicago ’s pipes , preventing the wind in former plumbing from leaching into the water supply . The water is then pumped into settling tanks where the floc sinks to the bottom . This sedimentation form obviate rough 90 percent of the particulate matter issue from the water .
The piddle is then sink in in one of 96 swimming pond - sized tanks filled with a layer of uncouth gravel under an upper layer of fine George Sand — together these layers efficaciously filter much of the stay floc and debris from the body of water . The entire process from crib to filtration takes eight hour . From here , the water is pump through 4,000 miles of pipe for consumption by the Chicago country ’s 5.5 million residents .
[ Me Magazine – Algor – Water Purification Wiki – Jardine Water Purification Plant Wiki ]
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