There is no such thing as an ...
Published by Joseph Cotruvo, President at Joseph Cotruvo & Associates, Water , Environment and Public Health
There is no such thing as an acceptable TDS for raw water. The question should be what is the acceptable TDS for the end use, e.g. for drinking water, if that is what you are producing, or for cooling water etc.
The WHO Guideline suggestion is 600 mg/l for palatability and water becomes more unpalatable as in approaches and exceeds 1000 mg/L. Any water can be treated to be safe and palatable. For example, sea water starts at about 35,000 -50,000 ppm and the TDS is reduced to perhaps 100 -200 ppm by the desalination process. Specific ions in the TDS might be a concern and those should be limited i the finished drinking water.