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Increased Protein-like Fluorescence Provides Early Warning of Distribution System Nitrification
Citation:
Pifer, A., T. Do, A. Morua, D. Molly, D. Wahman, W. Zhang, Z. Chowdhury, AND J. Fairey. Increased Protein-like Fluorescence Provides Early Warning of Distribution System Nitrification. Texas Water 2019, Houston, Texas, April 02 - 05, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
The environmental or health problem addressed by the study: A method to provide early detection of nitrification in drinking water A general description of the work and results: Experiments have been conducted to evaluate the fluorescent signal that can be used to provide the early detection of nitrification in drinking water The long term importance or significance of the findings: Provides a method to early detect nitrification Who would be interested in or could apply the results (e.g. program or regional partners, general public, local communities): Drinking water utilities
Description:
Online monitoring could be helpful for detecting nitrification in its earliest stages, and analyzers for the five required chloramine monitoring parameters are available. In practice, installation of these analyzers at locations within distribution systems has been limited due to their lack of specificity to nitrification, high cost, maintenance/reagent requirements, instrument size, and the need for power and communications equipment. An ongoing Water Research Foundation tailored collaboration project sponsored by DWU and HW aims to develop a fluorescence-based early-warning sensor system for nitrification detection. It is hypothesized that fluorescence metrics can be used to detect changes in organic matter produced by increased activity of nitrifying bacteria in the early stages of a nitrification event, before changes in traditional parameters like monochloramine and inorganic nitrogen species. This presentation will focus on the discovery of the fluorescence metric itself, which serves as the fundamental basis for developing fluorescence sensor packages for installation in full-scale distribution systems.