Drinking Water
Germany supports the United Nations in its quest to supply people worldwide with drinking water and in creating the suitable sanitary basic prerequisites for this. These measures are aimed at helping fight poverty and disease, preventing social unrest and avoiding mass exoduses of refugees.
Drinking water is water that is suitable for drinking, cooking and washing. The quality requirements of drinking water are correspondingly high. Raw (untreated) water only rarely exhibits the required quality when it is extracted. Purification is necessary, in particular due to the water's appearance, colour, cloudy substances, smell, taste, bacteria, viruses, germs, aggressive carbonic acids, oxygen deficiency, iron content, manganese content, water hardness and excessive concentrations of health-relevant substances.
In this country, regional spring water, ground water, dam water and surface water serve as raw water. In central waterworks, water is purified using various processes before it is transported through the pipelines to individual households and businesses. Drinking water is rarely drawn from so-called domestic wells.
Some of the most important drinking water purification processes include
• filtration,
• oxidation (e.g. iron removal, demanganisation),
• deacidification,
• central softening,
• sedimentation,
• germ removal and sterilisation.
Due to the high degree of chemical use in the agricultural sector, existing contaminated sites and continuous water pollution, it is becoming increasingly difficult in Germany to provide sufficient high-quality water.
The main objective of the projects on this topic is to optimise the hygienic safety of drinking water and simultaneously minimise the environmental pollution resulting from the treatment processes.
Federal Association of the German Energy and Water Industries (BDEW)