Challenges of Water Quality Modelling in Drinking Water Supply Systems
IWA 5th European Young and Senior Water Professionals Conference: Conference Proceedings 2013
Sandis Dejus, Jānis Rubulis

All around the world there are strict requirements for drinking water purification and there are special limits for microbial quality of drinking water. Since the DWD requirements allows small concentration of microorganisms in drinking water (Rubulis et al.2007) and the water purification processes in water treatment facilities are effective and high quality, safe drinking water has been provided, there are micro-organisms that are resistant to inactivation or disinfection process that survive and multiply within water distribution systems (Sekar et al. 2012). Microorganism’s occurrence in water distribution system (WDS) combined with favourable growth conditions for bacteria may lead to bacterial regrowth. Bacterial regrowth has been associated with coliform occurrence, the likelihood of waterborne illness, enhanced pipe corrosion, and taste and odour problems (Zhang et al. 2004). Each WDS is a complex system that consists of hundreds or thousands of individual pipe sections where numerous factors (e.g. characteristics of substrate, water temperature, concentration of residual disinfectant, etc.) impacts the bacterial regrowht, therefore it is very difficult to explain the bacterial regrowth (Zhang et al.2002). Based on complexity of the predictions of bacterial regrowht in WDS there has been a mathematical models developed to make the predictions accurate. The aim of this paper is to analyze the history of the water quality modelling and understand the challenges of water quality modelling in future. There are several challenges for water quality modelling: advection-dispersion-reaction modelling in pipes, mixing of different quality water in junctions. The previous studies has shown that those challenges plays a significant role in water quality modelling, because assumption done in previous models has been incorrect and to simplified to achieve precise results (Shang et al. 2007, Shang et al. 2008, Romero-Gomez et al. 2011, Choi et al. 2009). During last year’s there has been a significant progress in water quality modelling at WDS. Although there have been a numerous studies done, user friendly and precise water quality modelling tool has not been provided. After improvement of shortages, the water quality modelling tools would be a useful for water resource engineers, utility managers, water network designers and security organisations to make risk assessments and optimize the real time sensor installation.


Atslēgas vārdi
Drinking water, distribution network, modelling

Dejus, S., Rubulis, J. Challenges of Water Quality Modelling in Drinking Water Supply Systems. No: IWA 5th European Young and Senior Water Professionals Conference: Conference Proceedings, Ukraina, Kiev, 26.-28. jūnijs, 2013. Kiev: 2013, 246.-252.lpp.

Publikācijas valoda
English (en)
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