DRINKING WATER
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
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How To Get Greater Accuracy With Lower Flows In Commercial And Industrial Meters
Advanced commercial and industrial (C&I) ultrasonic meters have exceptional turndown ratios, water conditioning, and other features that are lowering operating costs, increasing revenue, and minimizing maintenance.
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What Is Noninvasive Leak Detection?
By utilizing advanced technologies to monitor water lines, utilities can detect leaks in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
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Ensuring Water And Wastewater Resiliency During The Pandemic
According to the American Water Works Association (AWWA), with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic impacting communities throughout the world, water professionals are working around the clock to ensure that safe, reliable water service continues to flow. But what if many of these essential employees now must work from home or only minimal crews are on-site at the plants?
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Leak Detection Program For Roswell, New Mexico
Harnessing satellite intelligence allows utilities to pinpoint hidden underground leaks with precision. By focusing field crews on high-probability clusters, municipalities can drastically reduce water loss, optimize repair budgets, and prioritize critical infrastructure replacement projects.
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Case Study: United Water New Jersey Discovers Large Leak On 42-Inch Water Main With Echologics Transmission Main Leak Detection Service
United Water New Jersey (UWNJ), a subsidiary of United Water, one of the leading water and wastewater service providers in the United States, provides water services to more than 800,000 people throughout Bergen and Hudson counties and surrounding areas. By Mueller Water Products
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Why Engineers Still Rely On Variable Area Technology
Simple yet effective, variable area flowmeters continue to deliver reliable, power-free measurement, with modern upgrades enhancing their flexibility, durability, and role in today’s process systems.
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On-Site Hypochlorite System Delivers Historic Efficiency Levels
In one of Pennsylvania’s three original counties, water has played an integral – even historic – role in the region’s development.
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Gandia Becomes A Smart Water City And Saves 0.5hm3 Of Water/Year
In 2008, the utility providing this Spanish city’s water supply and the city council decided to phase in a gradual process of digital transformation.
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Wastewater Plant In Como, Italy, Upgrades To De Nora Ozone For Significant Savings
The Lariana Depur wastewater treatment plant in Fino Mornasco, Italy, treats wastewater from multiple textile manufacturers in the Como region, known as the heart of the textile industry. Since 1994, ozone has been used effectively as a polisher to remove the dark blue-purple color — the result of the dyes used in the textile dyeing and printing process — from the water.
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Thanks To Digital Upgrade, Castle Rock's Asset Management Becomes Model For State
With a population of 55,000, the town of Castle Rock, Colorado, was named to “Money” magazine’s list of 100 Best Places to Live in America. It’s also a town on the cutting edge of managing its water, wastewater and storm water system assets with the help of the Hydrant and Valve Inspector from AMERICAN Flow Control (AFC) and Trimble Navigation.
DRINKING WATER APPLICATION NOTES
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The Basics: Keeping Our Water Clean Requires Monitoring4/30/2014
Keeping the water in our lakes, rivers, and streams clean requires monitoring of water quality at many points as it gradually makes its way from its source to our oceans. Over the years ever increasing environmental concerns and regulations have heightened the need for increased diligence and tighter restrictions on wastewater quality.
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Hemodialysis Patient Health10/29/2021
Controlling dialysate quality is critically important to hemodialysis patient health. Complications as minor as nausea and fatigue or as severe as metabolic acidosis and sepsis can result if dialysate composition is incorrect. All the factors that ultimately affect dialysate composition must therefore be carefully monitored and controlled: proper proportioning and mixing of concentrates with water; the quality of water mixed with concentrates to form dialysate; and the quality of water used in the reprocessing of hemodialyzers, system maintenance and disinfection.
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Municipal Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring9/24/2020
We arm municipalities with actionable data necessary to make informed decisions about water quality in their communities
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Flow Monitoring At Sea Water Reverse Osmosis Plant Improves Water Distribution1/6/2025
Read about a desalination plant that was in need of a practical verification methodology for permanent and/or temporary (portable) solutions on large pipes.
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Analyzing Total Organic Carbon In Sea Water4/2/2015
The analysis of Total Organic Carbon (TOC) in seawater can be both challenging and expensive. The concentration of organic carbon in seawater is of considerable interest. The effect this matrix can have on TOC analyzers can lead to rapid consumable turnover, costly maintenance and repairs.
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Application Note: Turbidity Monitoring In Drinking Water Treatment Plants8/30/2005
Turbidity, or the relative clarity of a liquid (in this case drinking water), is caused by the presence of microscopic particles such as clay, silt, or other fine undissolved matter
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Groundwater Remediation12/1/2020
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.
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Application Note: Troubleshooting A pH Electrode1/26/2011
Many factors affect performance of a pH electrode. When performance degrades, it is always a challenge for the analyst to identify the cause. Common troubleshooting procedures, which include evaluation of slope, electrode drift, time response, and accuracy, take considerable time. By Thermo Fisher Scientific
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Reducing And Reusing Water In Steel Manufacturing2/28/2022
The art of manufacturing steel for industries is well over 100 years old. Within this time, the steel business has fulfilled consumer needs, including construction, transportation, and manufacturing. The steel manufacturing process is quite intensive as it requires a lot of water to cool down the application. Steel plants constantly look for strategies that can help sustain the steel for a longer time by efficiently improving water and energy consumption.
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Preliminary Assessment Of Water Quality In Riviera Grise Near Port-Au-Prince, Haiti10/17/2012
The Riviera Grise drains water from the Cul-de-Sac watershed, Haiti, which covers most of the rural areas along the flood plains and areas that extend into steep hillsides. It also covers urban areas of Port-Au-Prince, the capital city of Haiti.
LATEST INSIGHTS ON DRINKING WATER
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Water agencies across the U.S. are facing a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that poses a conundrum: Should they take a cautious or aggressive approach to treating PFAS contamination in their water system?
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The U.S. EPA’s 2026 trichloroethylene (TCE) compliance deadlines are now forcing a concrete shift toward source-zone destruction. In situ chemical oxidation (ISCO), sequenced with enhanced bioremediation, is proving to be the most credible path to groundwater contaminant rebound mitigation.
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Generative design strengthens PR29 investment cases by enabling rigorous optioneering, accurate cost estimates, and clear outcome alignment, helping water companies meet rising regulatory expectations.
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Our infrastructure systems have operated in managed deterioration for decades. And not surprisingly, once they deteriorate badly enough and cross over into active failure, all cost discipline disappears.
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Currently, water infrastructure is outdated and fragile, prone to breakages and leaks. Reactive approaches to water infrastructure are only implemented after an incident and are more expensive than simple maintenance fixes. Geotechnical Internet of Things (IoT) devices enable water and wastewater industry professionals to identify and address issues before they escalate into catastrophic events.
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A new study linking certain groundwater sources to higher Parkinson’s risk underscores a broader question for the water sector: how environmental exposures in drinking water may influence long-term health.
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:
- Source water for a community’s drinking water supply
- Drinking water treatment of source water
- 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.