Water-Power an Outline of the Development and Application of the Energy of Flowing Water Book

PREFACE . IN this book it has been the primary object of the writer to give instructions for the operation of water-purification plants as simply and concisely as is consistent with reasonable completeness. In general, it has been the endeavor to treat the subject with special regard to the requirements of the non-technical operator of small plants, but certain portions have been treated more elaborately, experience seeming to show that graduate chemists have some difficulty in grasping certain phases of the work on h s t assuming charge of a purification plant. This seems to be especially true as regards the relation of the laboratory work to that of actual operation, the tendency being to neglect the latter and lay undue stress on the former. For the benefit of the non-technical operator it has been attempted to include in one book all information and data required in the operation of the plant, such as instructions for preparing standard solutions, making bacterial and chemical tests of the water, handling coagulants washing filters, keeping records, etc. For his further aid, charts embracing the computations necessary in determining the amounts of coagulants to be used have been added. To make the book more readable to those not intimately connected with water-purification plants, a chapter has been added giving detailed descriptions of the various types of plants and their component parts, together with numerous examples. A chapter on the natural chemistry of water has also been added, showing the derivation of its chemical constituents from the geological formations with which it comes in contact. The writer recognizes that the treatment of water is a very subtle and uncertainbranch of applied chemistry, in which every rule has numerous exceptions, and begs to be excused for the rather arbitrary handling of some parts of the subject made necessary to maintain simplicity and clearness to the non-technical reader. For the same reason the products of chemical reactions have been given as definite salts formed, instead of in the more scientific ionic form. In a book of this kind it is necessary to draw upon many vi PREFACE sources of information, and if the writer has failed to properly acknowledge such source in any case, the onlission has been inadvertent. Special acknowledgment is due the United States Geological Survey, from wliose reports were obtained considerable data for use in Chapter I, to The Engineering Record, to the Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and to the publications of the American Public Health Association...