Comparison of Techniques for Maintaining Adequate Disinfectant Residuals in a Full-Scale Water Distribution Network

Abstract

The present work provides a numerical comparison of different techniques that can be adopted to guarantee sufficient disinfectant residuals in a water distribution network (WDN) when chlorine or chloramine is used as disinfectant. First, while considering chlorine as a disinfectant, the implementation of booster stations in bulk areas and continuous outflows at dead-end nodes was considered. Afterward, the comparison between continuous and intermittent outflows was performed. The water volume being the same, water is provided through blowoffs for 24 h or for limited durations, respectively. Finally, the extent to which the results change was analyzed when chloramine is used instead of chlorine. The methodology is based on the use of the flow routing/water quality modeling software EPANET and its multispecies extension EPANET-MSX on a full-scale WDN. The results show that all the operational measures analyzed are effective to tackle the problem of low disinfectant residuals in WDN. Booster stations are effective to obtain a more uniform distribution of disinfectant throughout the WDN, while nodal blowoffs seem to be a necessary solution for the numerous and scattered dead-end nodes of WDN. The use of chloramine yielded a decrease in the number of blowoffs to open and in blowoff outflows.