Water Treatment Engineering for Critical Healthcare Applications

Water within a healthcare environment can serve everything from building services and laboratories to specialist equipment and clinical support processes.

The consequences of poor water system design can therefore be significantly greater than inconvenience or increased operating cost.

Healthcare water requires an understanding of water quality, system hygiene, distribution, redundancy, monitoring and maintainability.

Hydra-Clear designs, manufactures and maintains specialist water treatment systems for healthcare and associated critical facilities.

Different Applications Need Different Water

A hospital does not have one universal treated water requirement.

Systems may be required for:

• Laboratory water
• Equipment feedwater
• Sterile services support
• Washer and process equipment
• Boiler make-up
• Humidification
• Specialist clinical equipment
• High purity utilities
• Cooling systems
• Process rinse water

Each application needs to be considered against the requirements of the equipment and the site's water safety strategy.

Reverse Osmosis

RO is widely used where reduced dissolved solids and consistently low conductivity are required.

Healthcare RO systems can incorporate:

• Pretreatment
• Water softening
• Reverse osmosis
• Duplex RO
• UV treatment
• Final filtration
• Permeate storage
• Distribution pumps
• Conductivity monitoring
• Siemens PLC and HMI controls

Critical applications can also include duty/standby equipment and automatic changeover.

Water Hygiene

Water treatment equipment cannot be considered independently from the wider water system.

Storage, distribution, temperature, stagnation, turnover and materials can all affect water quality.

Hydra-Clear considers:

• Tank sizing
• Tank turnover
• Recirculation
• Dead legs
• Materials
• UV treatment
• Vent filtration
• Sample locations
• Point of use treatment
• Sanitisation
• Temperature
• Flow velocity

Where applicable, systems are designed to work within the customer's healthcare water safety requirements and relevant project guidance.

Redundancy Matters

For critical healthcare applications, the treatment philosophy needs to consider what happens when equipment fails.

Possible arrangements include:

• Duty/standby RO
• Duplex softeners
• Duty/standby pumps
• N+1 equipment
• Automatic changeover
• Buffer storage
• Independent treatment trains
• Critical alarms

The correct level of redundancy depends on the consequence of losing water production.

Instrumentation & Monitoring

Systems can incorporate monitoring of:

• Conductivity
• Flow
• Pressure
• Differential pressure
• Temperature
• Tank level
• UV intensity
• pH
• ORP

Status and alarms can also be communicated to the building management system where required.

Existing Healthcare Water Systems

Hydra-Clear can investigate and upgrade existing systems experiencing:

• Poor treated water quality
• Frequent membrane replacement
• Low production
• High conductivity
• Poor distribution
• UV problems
• Filtration issues
• Control faults
• Insufficient redundancy
• Increasing maintenance requirements

We aim to understand why the system is underperforming before recommending replacement.

Service & Planned Maintenance

Healthcare water infrastructure needs planned maintenance.

Hydra-Clear can provide:

• Preventative servicing
• Membrane replacement
• Filter replacement
• Resin replacement
• UV servicing
• Calibration
• System sanitisation
• Performance testing
• Emergency repair
• Critical spares

We service Hydra-Clear equipment and systems manufactured by others.

Talk to a Healthcare Water Engineer

Provide us with the equipment water specification, incoming analysis, required flow and operating philosophy.

We can develop the treatment system around the application.

Critical water systems should be engineered like critical infrastructure.

Call 0800 999 6770 or contact Hydra-Clear to discuss your healthcare water requirements.