Water utilities must ensure that adequate residual
concentrations of secondary disinfectants persist
throughout the distribution system to prevent
bacterial regrowth. To predict disinfectant concentrations,
a utility must use a combination of modeling
and water quality field sampling, which is
expensive. The need for sampling can be reduced if
a utility has a more robust water quality modeling
capacity. This study extends the understanding of
the rate of chloramine decay in the distribution
system, enabling utilities to make better predictions
of chloramine residuals and, perhaps, to reduce the
amount of costly sampling required.
This research demonstrates that a simple, inexpensive
new lab method, the pipe section reactor,
can be used to systematically study the rate of disinfectant
decay in various pipe materials and water
quality conditions. In addition, this study provides
kinetic models that can be used to predict chloramine
decay rates in all distribution systems. Includes 25 references, tables, figures.