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RedR TSS gravatar image
RedR TSS

A quick scan on the internet and bookshelf follows

The producers themselves promote the product for pre-treatment not for disinfection – see https://cleanwaterfortheplanet.com/potablewater.asp

Binnie and Kimber in Basic water treatment write about the use of copper sulphate as follows: Algal control is not easy. In the past it was common to control algal blooms by dosing copper sulfate before a bloom occurred. Copper is an algicide and the technique was effective in reducing algal blooms if properly monitored and applied. Copper was dosed at around 0.3 mg/l of copper sulfate. Except in very soft waters the copper was quickly removed by precipitation as copper carbonate. However, despite this, nowadays the dosing of relatively large quan¬tities of copper into the aquatic environment is unacceptable because of its effect on other organisms. Copper sulfate is toxic to fish at a concentration similar to that needed to kill algae and thus fish kills were common. Algal growth is often limited by the availability of phosphorus and thus in smaller reservoirs, or reservoirs storing upland water low in phosphate, it may be practicable to limit algal growth by dosing a ferric salt to precipitate phosphate. However, this is relatively expensive and produces sludge that has to be removed periodically.

WHO’s document on copper in drinking water https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/copper.pdf makes specific reference to copper sulfate pentahydrate – a quick reading would make me cautious in its use.

Overall, I would suggest it could be used as a pre-treatment to control algae if algae were the problem but not as disinfection; if used as pre-treatment, the subsequent treatment would need to be designed to remove/reduce the copper content to acceptable levels; final disinfection with chlorine would still be required; concerns about dangerous by products of chlorination are best addressed by designing better treatment than swopping to another disinfectant.

Regards, Tim