DRINKING WATER

dechlorination Is Monitoring Of Total Or Free Chlorine A Better Option For Dechlorination Control?

Accurate dechlorination control requires monitoring all residual oxidants that threaten membrane integrity. Total chlorine analysis provides the necessary precision at ultra-low levels, ensuring comprehensive protection against oxidative damage while maintaining reagent stability during intermittent system operations.

DRINKING WATER CASE STUDIES AND WHITE PAPERS

  • Update And Upgrade Of Ozone Dissolution System At Southwest Water Treatment Plant

    The burden of the unavailability of replacement parts for the aging generators and the FBD basins' high maintenance motivated the Orlando Utilities Commission's Southwest Water Treatment Plant to update and upgrade the plant’s ozone system.

  • Comparing Benefits Of V-Cone® And Coriolis Meters

    Proper operation of water treatment processes depends on accurate flow measurements. Also, flow data is often required by regulatory agencies.

  • Distillery Wastewater Byproducts Fuel Sustainability

    For distilleries, high levels of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), nitrogen, total dissolved solids (TDS), and total suspended solids (TSS) put extra pressure on optimal biological treatment requirements. Here are some techniques that can help distillers put a little extra money in the bank while meeting the challenges of environmental discharge requirements.

  • Hydroinformatics 101: Intro To Water Optimization And Efficiency

    Hydroinformatics offers a fresh perspective that is enabling communities around the world to tackle age-old problems in new ways and with a bigger toolset.

  • Creating Reusable Water From Municipal Sewage

    Al Shamal is the capital city of the municipality of Madinat ash Shamal in Qatar. With the majority of the town's population not yet connected to a sewer network, there was an immediate need to provide a wastewater treatment plant to treat wastewater generated from the towns' population and small industries. Ashghal, the Public Works Authority of Qatar and its end user, decided to install a tanker discharge facility with a compact sewage treatment plant to produce effluent suitable for reuse in irrigation.

  • Leakage Management: Meeting The Challenge

    Anglian Water has reduced leakage by 20% since 2010 and has committed to a further 23% reduction by 2025. Overwhelmingly, customers have told Anglian Water that leakage is a high priority and that they want to see it reduced to well below the Economic Level of Leakage (ELL).

    The aim was to develop, own and utilize a system that enables cost-effective, smart, real-time leakage monitoring at an individual asset level for Anglian Water's entire network. The team was faced with a multitude of challenging conditions; the sites consisted of a large range of materials, including but not limited to Cast Iron, Ductile Iron, Asbestos Cement, MDPE, and PVC.

  • The Murky Future Of Global Water Quality

    Population growth, economic development, and climate change are placing increasing pressure on our planet’s water resources. Many studies, including one conducted by IFPRI and Veolia in 2011, depict a future world with elevated tensions due to growing demand for a limited supply of water.

  • Shining A Light On Global Water Stress

    The word “unprecedented” is overused and often abused. Water stress, however — the situation in which the water resources in a region or country are insufficient for its needs — is today a major threat and we are in fact facing “unprecedented” challenges. Climate change is a big factor contributing to it, but it’s not the only factor. Without rapid changes in industrial water usage, it is predicted that within 10 years there will be a 40 percent global water deficit.

  • How To Get Acoustic Leak Detection For The Price Of An AMI Meter

    Whatever number a utility estimates as its non-revenue-water (NRW) loss rate — 20 percent, 30 percent, or more — the willingness to address it is often inversely proportional to the cost of doing so. Now, leak detection options that include acoustic monitoring as a built-in feature of residential water meter replacement are cutting the costs and complexity of identifying NRW losses and recapturing lost revenues.

  • Put A 'Stop' To Water-Main-Repair Shutdowns And Boil-Water Notices

    For most water or wastewater system operators, engineers, and repair crews, the only thing worse than facing a 24”-main emergency repair is facing an even larger one. To those who have never performed an emergency line stop and bypass, the idea of completing repairs with no service outage, no long-term shutdown, and no ‘boil water’ notice is almost beyond belief. To those who have, it’s a sigh of relief.

DRINKING WATER APPLICATION NOTES

DRINKING WATER PRODUCTS

The Series NXT3000 High Capacity Gas Feed System is a family of vacuum-operated, solution-feed, gas dispensing components including a vacuum regulator, meter assembly and ejector to meet customer needs for feeding chlorine, sulfur dioxide, ammonia or carbon dioxide gas. The Series NXT3000 is a versatile, high quality system which operates at sonic conditions eliminating the need for differential pressure regulation across the rate control valve.

The TrojanUVFlex is designed with features to make installation and operation simpler, faster, and more cost-effective than ever before. Built on the proven TrojanUV Solo Lamp Technology platform, TrojanUVFlex allows for energy-efficient high-intensity delivery of UV light in an extremely compact footprint.

The Proline Promag W 400 electromagnetic flowmeter is a versatile standard flowmeter for the water and wastewater industry.

The AquaDrum® Pressure Series cloth media filter is a pressurized vessel consisting of a perforated, vertically oriented drum utilizing OptiFiber® pile cloth filtration media.

Complete more tests on site, get the results you need faster, allowing you to visit more sites in each shift. Perform up to four colorimetric and two probe-based measurements in parallel 75% faster than with other methods.

As the latest addition to Hydra-Stop’s award-winning Insta-Valve family of solutions, customers with 20- and 24-inch pipes can now benefit from the only insertable gate valve with the superior performance and reliability you would expect from the Insta-Valve name.

LATEST INSIGHTS ON DRINKING WATER

DRINKING WATER VIDEOS

Appearing on The Weather Channel's "Wake Up With Al" morning show, water expert Dan Theobald puts drinking water to the test by measuring total dissolved solids (TDS) in tap water samples from Brooklyn, Manhattan, and New Jersey, as well as bottled water samples.

New sensor offers continuous monitoring, immediate detection of lead.

Stanford Earth’s Rosemary Knight recently spearheaded a project to map underground freshwater resources and forecast the intrusion of saltwater into aquifers beneath the California coastal town of Marina.

Bluefield Research analyst, Erin Bonney Casey, presents on water reuse markets in the U.S. during the WateReuse Association's One Water Innovations Press Workshop at WEFTEC 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Rather drink sewage water than LA tap water any day.

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.