Full Description

This researchis a first step to address thechallenge of detecting a large numberof potential contaminants in a drinkingwater distribution system in realtime. The basic premise of this researchis that readily available andrelatively inexpensive equipment can be used to determine in real timewhen contamination has occurred ina distribution system, with the intentbeing to provide an early warning sothat public health may be protected.Experiments were conducted withactual distribution system waterusing both batch and continuous-flowdata collection. After determiningthe baseline water quality inreal-time online instruments, modelcontaminants were added to batch- andpilot-scale distribution systems todetermine the level of detection withdifferent water quality parameters. Data were collected once perminute using datalogger software,collecting more than 16,000 datapoints. These data were used todetermine what represents "normal"water quality in the distribution systemand to estimate the populationstandard deviation. In addition, somegeneral information about the distributionof the data was providedas well as summary statistics. The results of this research indicatethat routine monitoring can beused in the distribution system todetect a range of contaminants inreal time, potentially providing adequateearly warning to take appropriateaction and protect publichealth. In addition to detectingintentional threat contaminants ina distribution system, real-timemonitoring offers the secondarybenefit of providing valuable waterquality data that may be key todetecting routine water qualitycompromises associated with linebreaks, backflow events, treatmentplant failures, or seasonal biofilmsloughing. This four-page summary provides a generaloverview of the complete text of this article, which isavailable online in e-JOURNAL AWWA atwww.awwa.org/communications/journal/2005/july. Includes 9 references.

Product Details

Edition: Vol. 97 - No. 7 Published: 07/01/2005 Number of Pages: 4 File Size: 1 file , 64 KB