DRINKING WATER

GettyImages-1437987503 washington DC Engineering Resilience In Water Supply: How Ozone-Based Oxidation Supports DC Water's Pure Water DC Vision

Securing urban water futures requires shifting toward resilient, multi-source supplies. Advanced oxidation provides a critical barrier against emerging contaminants, enhancing treatment efficiency and ensuring long-term reliability without chemical residuals. Explore the foundations of engineering a decentralized, drought-proof water supply.

DRINKING WATER CASE STUDIES AND WHITE PAPERS

DRINKING WATER APPLICATION NOTES

  • Improved Determination Of Volatile Organic Compounds In Water By SPME And GC/MS
    6/21/2018

    The analysis of water for volatile organic compounds is important due to their toxicity. The current methods for this determination lack of sensitivity, selectivity or capability for automation. This paper presents the new ISO 17943 Standard using Solid Phase Microextraction (SPME) and GC/MS. The sample preparation by SPME enables limits of detection and easy automation of the whole method. GC/MS provides the required sensitivity and selectivity. This ISO Standard was validated by an interlaboratory trial, which results confirm the outstanding performance for this method.

  • A New Way Of Designing With Reverse Osmosis Membranes
    7/23/2015

    Process design in water treatment is historically confined to proprietary or user-defined spreadsheets on a unit operation basis, with users manually adding results from each unit process upstream into the next operation.

  • Application Note: YSI Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring And The IPSWATCH-EMPACT Program
    12/28/2005
    The Ipswich and Parker Rivers watersheds lie only a short distance north of Boston, MA. The first settlements in these watersheds began in the early 1600s. Since that time, residents have relied heavily on the natural resources of the Parker and Ipswich Rivers, their coastal estuaries and Plum Island Sound, which is known as the Great Marsh. This ecosystem has been designated and protected by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC).
  • Groundwater Remediation
    12/1/2020

    Good quality groundwater is an important natural resource. It provides drinking water for the public as well as process water for industrial applications. Groundwater can become contaminated through a number of ways including improper handling of process chemicals or disposal of wastes.

  • Reduced Bore Electromagnetic Flowmeter
    10/29/2021

    Being able to accurately measure both the quantity and rate of water passing through a water distribution system is crucial to gain an informed understanding of overall efficiency. As such, achieving a measurement that is exact as possible can have a significant impact on key areas. This includes supply planning, maintenance, resource deployment, leakage detection and the overall environment.

  • Pipe Repair On A Budget
    3/7/2014

    A new pipe-repair solution promises to save time and money, while also being sustainable, long-lasting, fully scalable, and safe for workers.

  • Determination Of Pesticide Residues In Honey, By An Automated QuEChERS Solution
    9/17/2014

    The QuEChERS (Quick-Easy-Cheap-Effective-Rugged-Safe) sample extraction method was developed for the determination of pesticide residues in agricultural commodities.

  • Protection Of Membrane Systems Utilized For Municipal Water
    12/1/2020

    As water scarcity issues around the world become more acute, more municipalities are having to turn to alternative water sources for potable water supplies. Also, many municipalities in coastal areas are seeing the quality of their water sources degrade as sea water intrusion occurs.

  • Industry-Specific Applications For UV Technology
    6/17/2024

    In Microelectronics, Aquafine UV systems provide a synergistic approach towards the reduction of trace organics and microbial contamination for ultrapure water.

  • The Basics: ORP and Free Chlorine Monitoring
    5/13/2014

    Oxidation Reduction Potential or Redox is the activity or strength of oxidizers and reducers in relation to their concentration. Oxidizers accept electrons, reducers lose electrons. Examples of oxidizers are: chlorine, hydrogen peroxide, bromine, ozone, and chlorine dioxide. Examples of reducers are sodium sulfite, sodium bisulfate and hydrogen sulfide. Like acidity and alkalinity, the increase of one is at the expense of the other.

DRINKING WATER PRODUCTS

The CHEM-FEED CFPS-3 Triplex Skid System design allows for a two-pump injection system with one pump acting as a backup, eliminating downtime in critical applications.

Making results data public is key to your lead programs success. Easily download reports to share with state and district stakeholders.

Engineered and built for dependable performance, the TrojanUVSwift® requires a minimal number of lamps to treat a given flow, and is serviceable from one side for easy maintenance. It also incorporates innovative features to reduce operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, including variable output lamp drivers and our revolutionary ActiClean® automatic sleeve wiping system.

Geospace Technologies offers a complete line of AMI water meter connector cables specifically designed and manufactured to meet the rugged requirements for in-pit, underwater applications. Geospace’s unique design ensures total moisture sealing for even the toughest underwater environments, yet they are easily re-entered for troubleshooting a transponder or for a meter swap-out. Versions are available that utilize molded-in-place or potted terminators for sealing. Either version is totally intermateable with the Itron Inline Connector.

The PermaNET SU leak detection loggers are a key part of our product lineup. These loggers function as acoustic sensors attached to the external surface of clean water distribution pipes. The leak detection process involves two main steps: first, the loggers measure the noise level emitted by the pipes and then evaluate it against a predefined threshold. Made in America and winner of the Environmental Protection Award, these loggers exemplify top-notch quality and reliability.

In municipal drinking water applications or pre-treatment for desalination plants using gravity filters, the filter underdrain is one of the most important components contributing to overall system performance and operation — whether a new filter design or retrofitting an existing filter.

LATEST INSIGHTS ON DRINKING WATER

DRINKING WATER VIDEOS

Fresh off TrojanUV being named manufacturer of the year by the WateReuse Association, Water Online caught up with Jennifer Muller, Vice President of Global Municipal Sales for TrojanUV at this year’s WEFTEC, to understand how ultra violet systems are being applied in the growing movement towards direct and indirect potable water reuse.

In this episode of Ozone Talks, host Sannel Patel takes viewers deep inside Pinnacle Ozone Solutions’ cutting-edge ozone generation technology. Joined by senior engineer Eric Francis and technician Dayton Julius, the discussion centers around the Quad Block ozone cell—a patented, modular system redefining ozone production through innovation, precision, and durability.

The International Junior Science Olympiad 2017 (IJSO) was held in the Netherlands in December 2017. Xylem Inc. was official sponsor of the event, in which students aged 15 from 50 countries compete with one another on the topic Water & Sustainability.

Did you know satellites can measure Earth’s oceans from space? The Jason-3 satellite, set to launch in July 2015, will collect critical sea surface height data, adding to a satellite data record going back to 1992.

Scientists are developing new motors that are tiny and soft. They run on things like light, magnetic effects or chemical solutions. And they can serve specific functions — including cleaning up pollution.

ABOUT DRINKING WATER

In most developed countries, drinking water is regulated to ensure that it meets drinking water quality standards. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers these standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)

Drinking water considerations can be divided into three core areas of concern:

  1. Source water for a community’s drinking water supply
  2. Drinking water treatment of source water
  3. Distribution of treated drinking water to consumers

Drinking Water Sources

Source water access is imperative to human survival. Sources may include groundwater from aquifers, surface water from rivers and streams and seawater through a desalination process. Direct or indirect water reuse is also growing in popularity in communities with limited access to sources of traditional surface or groundwater. 

Source water scarcity is a growing concern as populations grow and move to warmer, less aqueous climates; climatic changes take place and industrial and agricultural processes compete with the public’s need for water. The scarcity of water supply and water conservation are major focuses of the American Water Works Association.

Drinking Water Treatment

Drinking Water Treatment involves the removal of pathogens and other contaminants from source water in order to make it safe for humans to consume. Treatment of public drinking water is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. Common examples of contaminants that need to be treated and removed from water before it is considered potable are microorganisms, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals and radionuclides.

There are a variety of technologies and processes that can be used for contaminant removal and the removal of pathogens to decontaminate or treat water in a drinking water treatment plant before the clean water is pumped into the water distribution system for consumption.

The first stage in treating drinking water is often called pretreatment and involves screens to remove large debris and objects from the water supply. Aeration can also be used in the pretreatment phase. By mixing air and water, unwanted gases and minerals are removed and the water improves in color, taste and odor.

The second stage in the drinking water treatment process involves coagulation and flocculation. A coagulating agent is added to the water which causes suspended particles to stick together into clumps of material called floc. In sedimentation basins, the heavier floc separates from the water supply and sinks to form sludge, allowing the less turbid water to continue through the process.

During the filtration stage, smaller particles not removed by flocculation are removed from the treated water by running the water through a series of filters. Filter media can include sand, granulated carbon or manufactured membranes. Filtration using reverse osmosis membranes is a critical component of removing salt particles where desalination is being used to treat brackish water or seawater into drinking water.

Following filtration, the water is disinfected to kill or disable any microbes or viruses that could make the consumer sick. The most traditional disinfection method for treating drinking water uses chlorine or chloramines. However, new drinking water disinfection methods are constantly coming to market. Two disinfection methods that have been gaining traction use ozone and ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect the water supply.

Drinking Water Distribution

Drinking water distribution involves the management of flow of the treated water to the consumer. By some estimates, up to 30% of treated water fails to reach the consumer. This water, often called non-revenue water, escapes from the distribution system through leaks in pipelines and joints, and in extreme cases through water main breaks.

A public water authority manages drinking water distribution through a network of pipes, pumps and valves and monitors that flow using flow, level and pressure measurement sensors and equipment.

Water meters and metering systems such as automatic meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) allows a water utility to assess a consumer’s water use and charge them for the correct amount of water they have consumed.