WATER MANAGEMENT

Protecting Water Infrastructure and Access

Clean water depends on three separate engineering problems: making fresh water where there isn't enough of it, disinfecting the water that exists, and keeping the pipes and tanks that move it from failing before their replacement is budgeted. American Carbon anodes work in all three. Desalination plants use BADGERCUSTOM anodes engineered for high-chloride seawater intake and reverse-osmosis pretreatment systems. Municipal and industrial disinfection runs on BADGERCHROME Water Treatment anodes generating sodium hypochlorite on-site through brine electrolysis. Underground distribution networks rely on a whole host of Cathodic Protection Solutions for the galvanic and impressed-current protection named in AWWA's D104 and C105 standards.

Seawater to Drinking Water

Desalination turns seawater into drinking water using reverse osmosis (RO): high-pressure pumps force seawater through semi-permeable membranes that block salt and other dissolved solids, leaving fresh water behind. RO is the standard pretreatment and primary technology for large modern plants, the Carlsbad Desalination Plant in California, one of the largest in the Western Hemisphere, produces roughly 50 million gallons of drinking water a day. California leans on plants like it because the Colorado River can no longer reliably cover regional demand on its own.

Desalination intakes sit in a different corrosion environment than almost anything else in water management: high chloride concentration and an aggressive electrolyte chemistry mean off-the-shelf anode material is rarely the right call. Material composition has to be matched to the specific water chemistry and intake conditions of each plant, which is why the anode spec for these systems almost always falls under our BADGERCUSTOM line rather than a catalog part.

Intakes also face marine growth, mussels, barnacles, and algae colonize screens and piping fast enough to choke flow and damage equipment. The standard countermeasure is electrochlorination: generating sodium hypochlorite directly from the seawater feed to keep the intake clear. BADGERCHROME Water Treatment anodes run that process continuously, using the same underlying electrolysis covered in the hypochlorite tab, just deployed at the intake instead of the disinfection stage.

Locally Produced Safe Drinking Water

Sodium hypochlorite, the workhorse disinfectant for municipal water, gets generated on-site by running direct current through a brine (NaCl and water) solution: NaCl + H2O, electrolyzed across an MMO anode and cathode, yields NaOCl (sodium hypochlorite) plus hydrogen gas. BADGERCHROME Water Treatment anodes are built to run that reaction continuously at the concentrations and current densities municipal systems need.

On-site generation produces a dilute solution, typically around 0.8% available chlorine, compared to 12-15% for bulk sodium hypochlorite delivered by truck. That difference matters operationally: 12-15% bulk bleach is a hazardous material that degrades in storage and requires secondary containment and hazmat handling, while low-concentration on-site output can be produced and used within hours, skipping bulk storage and transport risk entirely.

The same chemistry, and often the same electrode design, shows up in industrial laundry and textile bleaching. Calcium hypochlorite covers an adjacent set of jobs, swimming pool disinfection, paper and textile bleaching, and food-processing sanitation, even though the customer and end use look nothing alike.

What determines whether a hypochlorite system runs efficiently is electrode current distribution: an anode that degrades unevenly produces less hypochlorite per unit of power and needs replacing more often. BADGERCHROME Water Treatment anodes are engineered around that consistency, whether the customer is a municipal utility, a pool operator, or a food-processing sanitation line.

Water Utility Infrastructure

Water pipes get a lot less corrosion protection than oil and gas pipelines, and the gap is regulatory. PHMSA has mandated cathodic protection on oil and gas pipelines for decades. Water utilities have no equivalent federal mandate, what they have is consensus standards: NACE/AMPP SP0169 for corrosion control of buried and submerged metallic piping, AWWA D104 for impressed-current protection on steel tank interiors, and AWWA C105 for polyethylene encasement on buried ductile iron pipe. All three are solid guidance. None are required.

The consequences show up in the numbers. Roughly 240,000 water mains break every year in the U.S. The American Society of Civil Engineers grades the nation's drinking water infrastructure a C-minus, the same grade it got four years earlier despite new federal funding. Of the $649 billion EPA's Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey estimates the country needs to spend over the next 20 years, $421 billion, the largest single line item, is for repairing and replacing pipe itself.

BADGERCONNECT Magnesium Anodes handle galvanic protection on smaller distribution assets and tanks, where a full impressed-current system is overkill. BADGERCOAT MMO Anodes, BADGERCAST HSCI Anodes, and BADGERCOMP Graphite Anodes all fit larger distribution networks and tanks needing decades of protection with minimal maintenance. Inside steel tanks specifically, more utilities are moving to automatically controlled impressed-current systems built to AWWA D104 instead of relying on coating alone.

Frequently asked questions

This process is called electrochlorination (or brine electrolysis), which uses electricity to manufacture liquid bleach on-site. By forcing a direct electrical current through a saltwater mixture (NaCl + H2), the electricity breaks apart the chemical bonds, forcing the molecules to recombine into a powerful, natural disinfectant (hypochlorite (NAOCl) plus Hydrogen gas (H2). Very sophisticated systems capture the hydrogen gas produced and use it as an energy source as well.

WATER MANAGEMENT

Protecting Water Infrastructure and Access

Seawater to Drinking Water

Locally Produced Safe Drinking Water

Water Utility Infrastructure

Frequently asked questions

How is hypochlorite generated on-site for water disinfection?

Are water utilities required to use cathodic protection on buried pipe?

What's the difference between on-site generated and bulk delivered hypochlorite?

What anode works in a desalination plant's seawater intake?

How many water main breaks happen in the U.S. each year?

How many desalination plants are there currently in operation and what is the future outlook?