Assessment of water quality in distribution networks through the lens of disinfection by-product rules

Abstract

Disinfection with chlorine is a common practice to ensure secured drinking water, but results in potentially harmful disinfection by-products (DBPs), when excess chlorination is done. The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) has established Stage 1 and Stage 2 disinfection by-product Rules (DBP rules) to control DBP exposure. A modified version of the Canadian Council of Ministries of the Environment water quality index (CCME WQI) is used to assess water quality. CCME WQI is a globally accepted index to assess water quality, but is too generic to be used for DBP rules. The study developed a scheme to make the index suitable for DBP rules. A scoring method based on an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is applied to assign weights based on DBP rules. A previously modified CCME WQI (Islam et al., 2014) is adapted along with the weights to perform the assessment at the distribution network (DN). A case study was performed on 7 sampling stations in a Québec City DN. The spatial water quality variations are presented using kriging -a geostatistical method, which identifies the regions with relatively poor water quality and highlights the potential locations for re-chlorination points. The proposed assessment formulation is flexible to handle situations with limited data, which makes it especially suited to smaller municipalities.

Spatiotemporal Water Quality Variations in Smaller Water Supply Systems: Using Modified CCME WQI from Groundwater Source to Distribution Networks

“…Health-based guideline value of residual chlorine is 5 mg/L while to avoid taste and odor complaints, levels less than 0.3 mg/L are desirable in some cases [18]. In present research, the target value of minimum residual chlorine is established as 0.2 mg/L and maximum value of 4 mg/L [8]. Target level for turbidity is 1 NTU [18].…”

“…Earlier, Islam et al [8] modified Equation (1) by allocating weights to water quality parameters and used it for assessing the spatiotemporal variations of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in distribution networks. Farzadkia et al [9] used Equation 1for spatiotemporal water quality assessment of the Yamchi Dam in Iran.…”

Application of the analytical hierarchy process for planning the rehabilitation of water distribution networks

“…AHP is one of the most widely used MCDM methods in the field of water management (Hajkowicz & Higgins, 2008). Several researchers have applied the AHP in different sector of water resources management (Dos Santos et al ., 2019; Pagano, Giordano, & Vurro, 2021), urban infrastructure management (Fraga, Medellın-Azuara, & Marques, 2017), wastewater management (Igroufa, Benzerra, & Seghir, 2020), sustainability assessment of water and sanitation services (Boukhari, Djebbar, Amarchi, & Sohani, 2018), reduction of water losses in distribution networks (Zyoud et al ., 2016) and water quality assessment (Islam, Sadiq, Rodriguez, & Legay, 2016). Various researchers have applied the AHP method in the case of the rehabilitation of WDN.…”

Avaliação Da Proposta De Enquadramento Por Meio Do Ice Em Reservatórios Da Bacia Do Ipojuca, Pernambuco, Brasil

“…Council of Ministries of the Environment). Desde 1997, tem sido amplamente utilizado para avaliar as condições dos corpos hídricos em todo o mundo (ISLAM et al, 2016;ALMEIDA;OLIVEIRA, 2018;BIL-GIN, 2018;OLIVEIRA et al, 2018;MENBERU et al, 2021). Segundo Barbosa e colaboradores (2019), o ICE compara os dados de monitoramento com os padrões determinados pela legislação, permitindo assim, verificar o atendimento da qualidade da água ao enquadramento, além de proporcionar um melhor controle para os padrões estabelecidos (AMARO; PORTO, 2009).…”