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Microbial water quality of the built environment and Development of an UV-LEDs POU device for water disinfection
Citation:
Ryu, H. Microbial water quality of the built environment and Development of an UV-LEDs POU device for water disinfection. US-KOREA Water Innovation Seminar 2023, Seoul, SOUTH KOREA, March 21 - 22, 2023.
Impact/Purpose:
The “US-KOREA Water Innovation Seminar 2023” will be held in Seoul, Korea from March 21 – 23, 2023. In conjunction with the water event of Water Korea, it will be a significant gathering to collaborate in boosting the water solidarity between the U.S. and Korea. This seminar is being organized jointly by Korea Water Partnership (KWP) and the Ministry of Environment, Korea. Besides researchers from universities, academic organizations, and industry, it is anticipated that representatives of Korean Government, U.S. Water Research Foundation (WRF), and U.S. Water Environment Federation (WEF) will attend the seminar.Besides the presentation at the Water Innovation Seminar as an invited speaker, EPA and KWP will share expertise and experience to advance water treatment technology and to build a specific collaborative relationship, along with the Cooperative Research And Development Agreement (CRADA) # 1350-20. We will follow up on the cooperation projects and to concrete the partnership between EPA and KWP regarding Water technology/R&D trends in the U.S.
Description:
Potable water is delivered to buildings via water treatment and distribution systems. USEPA regulates the delivery of this water; however, the regulations stop at the distribution system, and they don’t continue into the buildings. Water management plans often employ low-cost easy treatments such as heat treatment, flushing protocols, and water drainage. In this presentation, I aimed at monitoring the occurrence of three major opportunistic premise plumbing pathogens (OPPPs) and phagocytic amoebae using molecular assays and investigated the efficacy of different treatment options on the microbial population of a simulated home plumbing system (HPS) located in EPA’s lab, Cincinnati, OH. The results suggest that additional research is needed in distribution system treatment options. In the second part of this presentation, the feasibility of using ultraviolet (UV) light emitting diodes (LEDs) for the disinfection of environmental waters is evaluated through the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between USEPA and Korea Water Partnership (KWP). In this work, we employed multiple wavelength UV-LEDs, organic reflective materials, and innovative hydraulic designs for better performance of UV disinfection. The on-site evaluation was conducted over 6 months using secondary treated wastewater from the EPA T&E facility in a local wastewater treatment plant in Cincinnati, OH. The results with practical applications provide information that will be useful to the water and wastewater industries and for practitioners in UV disinfection science and engineering.