ECW 566 – Water & Wastewater

Engineering

Topic:
DISINFECTION

WEEK 6

Part 2
Water Treatment 1
 DISINFECTION

▪ Disinfection – to reduce pathogens to an acceptable level

▪ Sterilization – destruction of all living organisms
▪ Drinking water need not be sterile
▪ Disinfection is usually carried out to remove bacteria, viruses
and amoebic cysts

Water Treatment 2
Disinfectants must posses the following:

▪ Destroy the kinds and numbers of pathogens introduced into

water within a practicable period of time over an expected
range in water temperature
▪ Meet possible fluctuations in composition, concentration, and
condition of the water
▪ Neither toxic to humans and domestic animals nor unpalatable
or objectionable in required concentrations
▪ Dispensable at reasonable cost and safe and easy to store,
transport, handle, and apply
▪ Easy to determine the strength of concentration
▪ Persists within disinfected water in a sufficient concentration to
provide reasonable residual protection against possible
recontamination before use (the disappearance of residuals is
a warning that recontamination may have taken place)

Water Treatment 3
Typical disinfectants:

▪ Chlorine
▪ Chlorine dioxide
▪ Ozonation
▪ Ultraviolet radiation
▪ Advanced Oxidation Process (AOPs)

Water Treatment 4
 Disinfection Kinetics
Under ideal conditions, when an exposed microorganism
contains a single site vulnerable to a single unit of
disinfection, the rate of die-off follows Chick’s law as follows
dN
− = k N (6 - 57)
dt

where
N = number of organisms
k = first-order rate constant (day-1)

Increased rates of kill may occur because of time lag in the

disinfectant reaching vital centres in the cell. Decreased rates of
kill may occur because of declining concentration of disinfectant
in solution or poor distribution of organisms and disinfectant

Water Treatment 5
 Chlorine reactions in water

Chlorine may be added as the element (Cl2), as sodium

hypochlorite (NaOCl), or as calcium hypochlorite [Ca(OCl)2]

When chlorine is added to water, a mixture of hypochlorous

acid (HOCl) and hydrochloric acid (HCl) is formed:

Cl2 (g) + H2O = HOCl + H+ + Cl- (6-58)

Reaction is pH dependent and essentially complete within

a few milliseconds. In dilute solution and pH below 1.0,
equilibrium is displaced to the right and very little Cl2 exists
in solution.

Water Treatment 6
Hypochlorous acid is a weak acid and dissociates poorly
at levels of pH below about 6. Between 6 and 8.6 a
sharp change occurs from undissociated HOCl to almost
complete dissociation:

HOCl = H+ + OCl-

HOCl is about 80 - 100 times more effective than is OCl-

for E. Coli

[HOCl] + [OCl-] = free available chlorine

Chlorine exists predominantly as HOCl at pH between

4.0 and 6.0

Water Treatment 7
Chlorine that exists in water in chemical combination
with ammonia or organic nitrogen compounds is called
combined available chlorin

Refer to pages 336 – 339 for more detail on chlorine

reactions in water

Refer to Example 6-21

Water Treatment 8
 Chlorine/Ammonia Reactions
Ammonia reacts with HOCl to form various chloramines, which
retain the oxidising power of the chlorine.

HOCl + NH3 = NH2Cl + H2O

NH2Cl (monochloramine) is less effective but longer lasting

HOCl + NH2Cl= NHCl2 + H2O

NHCl2 (dichloramine)

HOCl + NHCl2 = NHCl3 + H2O

NCl3 (trichloramine/nitrogen trichloride)

Water Treatment 9
 Practices of Water Chlorination
Some of the practices include:

▪ Combined Residual Chlorination - application of chlorine to

water in order to produce, with added ammonia, a combined
available chlorine residual, and to maintain that residual
through part or all of a water-treatment plant or distribution
system
▪ Free Residual Chlorination – application of chlorine to water
to produce, directly or through the destruction of ammonia, a
free available chlorine residual and to maintain that residual
through part or all of a water treatment plant or distribution
system.

Water Treatment 10
Fig 6-41 Breakpoint chlorination
Water Treatment 11
 Chlorine Dioxide (ClO2)
▪ Very strong oxidant.
▪ It is formed on-site by combining chlorine and sodium
chlorite.
▪ Often used as a primary disinfectant, inactivating the
bacteria and cysts, followed by the use of chloramine as a
distribution system disinfectant
▪ Does not maintain a residual long enough to be useful as a
distribution-system disinfectant.
▪ Does not react with precursors to form DBPs (disinfection
byproducts)

Water Treatment 12
 Ozonation
▪ Ozone (O3) is a pungent-smelling, unstable gas.
▪ It is generated at the point of use
▪ It is a powerful oxidant, more than hypochlorous acid
▪ More effective than chlorine in destroying viruses and cysts
▪ Has the advantage of not forming THMs (trihalomethanes)
▪ It will not persist in water (similar to chlorine dioxide)
decaying back to oxygen in minutes
▪ Hence, usually added to the raw water or between the
sedimentation basins and filter for primary disinfection
▪ More expensive than chlorine

Water Treatment 13
 Ultraviolet Radiation
▪ Disinfects water by rendering pathogenic organisms
incapable of reproducing.
▪ Accomplished by disrupting the genetic material in cells
▪ water must be free of turbidity and lamps free of slime
and precipitates
▪ No residual protection

Water Treatment 14
Fig 6-42 UV disinfection system schematic

Water Treatment 15
 ADVANCED TREATMENT PROCESSES
Advanced Oxidation Processes
▪ improved disinfection
▪ oxidize synthetic organic chemicals
▪ taste and odor control
Activated carbon adsorption
▪ Granular (GAC) or powder (PAC)
▪ remove recalcitrant synthetic organic chemicals, THMs, taste and odor
compounds
▪ concern with bacterial growth problems
Membrane process
▪ discriminate on both size and chemistry
▪ selective removal including desalination
▪ Includes Reverse Osmosis (RO), Nano-filtration (NF) (hardness, color and
Disinfection by-product - DBP), Ultrafiltration (UF) (organic materials),
Microfiltration (MF) (microbial removal)
▪ UF ≈ MF, the different is the pore size. Pore UF << MF

Water Treatment 16
Fig 6-43 Schematic representation of a membrane process

Water Treatment 17
 RESIDUALS MANAGEMENT

Finished
water

Water Treatment 18
 Four categories
• Treatment plant that coagulate, filter and oxidized a
surface water for removal of turbidity, color, bacteria,
algae and some organic compounds and often iron
and/or manganese (using alum or iron salt)
• Practice softening for the removal of calcium and
magnesium by the addition of lime, sodium hydroxide
and/or soda.
• Removing the trace organic such as nitrate, fluoride,
radium and arsenic, using ion exchange, reverse
osmosis, or adsorption.
• Producing the air-phase residuals during the stripping
of volatile compounds.

Water Treatment 19
 Residuals Management – Dewatering

▪ Lagoons : storage or dewatering lagoon (page 357)

▪ Sand-dying beds – spreading the sludge out and letting it
dry (page 358)
▪ Freeze treatment (page 360)
▪ Centrifugation – apply centrifugal force to speed-up the
separation of sludge particles from the liquid (page 361)
▪ Vacuum filtration – vacuum is applied to extract water,
leaving the solids (or filter cake) on the filter medium (page
361)
▪ Continuous belt filter press – bending a sludge cake
contained between two filter belts around a roll introduces
shear and compressive forces in the cake, allowing water
out from the sludge (page 632)
▪ Plate Pressure filters (page 362)

Water Treatment 20
 Residuals Management – Ultimate Disposal

▪ On-site storage
▪ Landfilling
▪ Land application – soil amendment
▪ Reclamation/recycling – new products
▪ Ocean dumping – banned in US

Refer to pages 351 -365

Water Treatment 21
Sample Calculations for
Water Treatment

Water Treatment 22
In a water treatment settling unit, water at a temperature of 20C carries
solid particles with an average diameter of 0.05 mm and a specific
gravity of 1.2. Using Stoke’s law, calculate the settling velocity of the
settling particles (Duggal)

At the above temperature, the viscosity is 1.0021 x 10-3 Pa.s

From Stokes law,

g ( s −  )d 2 9.81 (1200 − 1000)  0.000052

vs = =
18  18  1.002  10 −3
= 0.00027 m/s = 0.027 mm/s

Water Treatment 23
Design of Baffle type Mixing Basins (Duggal)

Water Treatment 24
Min. to sec. IN

3m 0.45 m

Water Treatment OUT 25

 IN

3m
0.45 m

OUT

Water Treatment 26
9.0 x 4
60

Water Treatment 27
Water Treatment 28
175,675 l/m/day

Water Treatment 29
Design Criteria for rapid sand filter (Duggal)

K = 10 - 14

Water Treatment 30
Water Treatment 31
 4.5 x 1.04 = 4.68 mld 24 - 0.5 = 23.5 hr

Recommended 100 l/m2/min

5m
Assume
4m

Water Treatment 32
 2.5 – 3 m
4 x 10-4 – 6 x 10-3

Hudson’s formula

K = 10
K = 10 - 14
Hg = 2.54 k (log dg)

K = 10 K = 12
12.1 14.5
19.7 23.7
27.4 32.9
35.0 42.1
43.1 51.8

Water Treatment 33
Water Treatment 34
Total area of perforations

cm to meter

Water Treatment 35
Water Treatment 36
cm to meter

Water Treatment 37
 0.05 m3/s x 1000L/m3 x
60 sec/min = 3000 lpm
Water Treatment 38
Water Treatment 39
Water Treatment 40
Thank You

Water Treatment 41