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Development of Laboratory Equipment and protocols for the Assessment of Rain, Water Wash-Down, and Channelized Flow for Removal of Spores on Urban Surfaces
Citation:
Mikelonis, A. AND W. Calfee. Development of Laboratory Equipment and protocols for the Assessment of Rain, Water Wash-Down, and Channelized Flow for Removal of Spores on Urban Surfaces. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-18/322, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
This report documents the characterization of custom designed laboratory scale rainfall simulators, channelized flow, and spray chambers. These equipment were constructed for studying the fate and transport of spores that are an environmental contaminant and public health concern. The report includes data that documents the spray patters and intensities of the nozzles that were tested and ultimately selected for use in the instruments. The report also includes procedures for operating the instruments for washoff studies of spore removal from urban impervious materials. These equipment are planned be used in the Homeland Security Research Program over the course of many fate and transport projects and this report will serve as a starting point for achievable experimental design criteria. This report may be of interest to researchers interested in contaminate fate and transport in stormwater and decontamination researchers and practitioners interested in using spray based techniques for removing biological agents.
Description:
A large-scale outdoor biological disaster requires a better understanding of how rainfall and water-based decontamination measures would transport contaminants. Over the last few years, the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Homeland Security Research Program (HSRP), in the Office of Research and Development (ORD), has built and characterized a laboratory-scale rainfall simulator and a channelized flow simulator. HSRP has also developed bench-scale power washing testing protocols to study the movement of Bacillus anthracis (Ba) simulants. Spore washoff results are provided in the appendices of this report, but other publications will fully analyze and synthesize the nuances of the results. The primary focus of this report is to document the characterization of these apparatuses and discuss the future direction of this work.