Drinking Water: Water Quality and Treatment

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water and One Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2023) | Viewed by 22057

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, Key Laboratory of Yangtze Water Environment, Ministry of Education, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Interests: drinking water; water treatment; nanofiltration; disinfection; biological activated carbon; advanced oxidation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Key Laboratory of Integrated Regulation and Resource Development Shallow Lakes, Ministry of Education, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Interests: groundwater; nanofiltration; biological activated carbon; advanced oxidation; ultrasonication

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The application of advanced water treatment processes has had a major impact on water quality. Safe drinking water requires a holistic approach that considers the source of water, the treatment processes, and the distribution system. The most common treatment process consists of coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, and disinfection. Water distribution systems may suffer from problems such as taste and odors, enhanced chlorine demand, and disinfection byproducts. Some pre-treatments and moderate oxidation enhancing coagulation can be used without damaging cell membranes. Similar to sand filtration, biological activated carbon can be used as a modern water technology that can also form a biofilm and allow biodegradation of natural organic matter. Nanofiltration and reverse osmosis use a pore size that excludes low-molecular-weight compounds and have demonstrated efficiency in removing dissolved organic matter and disinfection byproduct precursors. This Special Issue is also devoted to the application of different water treatment in drinking water treatment to improve water quality.

Prof. Dr. Yulin Tang
Prof. Dr. Cheng Liu
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • drinking water
  • water treatment
  • water quality
  • disinfection
  • advanced water treatment
  • membrane
  • nanofiltration
  • biological activated carbon

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 5978 KiB  
Article
Three-Dimensional Biofilm Electrode Reactors with a Triple-Layer Particle Electrode for Highly Efficient Treatment of Micro-Polluted Water Sources
by Baoshan Wang, Xiuxiu Yang, Xiaojie Chen, Lei Tan and Guangzong Wang
Water 2023, 15(10), 1833; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15101833 - 11 May 2023
Viewed by 1425
Abstract
Micro-polluted water, which is widespread in rural areas, poses a serious health risk. To address this issue, we propose a three-dimensional biofilm electrode reactor with triple-layer particle electrodes (TL-BERs) for the decentralized and small-scale treatment of micro-polluted water. The first and second layers [...] Read more.
Micro-polluted water, which is widespread in rural areas, poses a serious health risk. To address this issue, we propose a three-dimensional biofilm electrode reactor with triple-layer particle electrodes (TL-BERs) for the decentralized and small-scale treatment of micro-polluted water. The first and second layers of the electrode, granular activated carbon (GAC) and biological ceramsite (BC), respectively, are responsible for electric field oxidation and microbial degradation, respectively, while the third, quartz sand (QS), is responsible for further improving turbidity and pollutant removal. Our tests indicated that the TL-BER-treated effluent met the drinking water quality standards of China. At 10 V, the average turbidity, CODMn, NH4+-N, and UV254 removal rates of the TL-BERs system were 97.66%, 61.11%, 91.67%, and 72.94%, respectively. Furthermore, the intensities of the main fluorescence peaks, A, B, C, and D, of the raw water sample, decreased by 36.67%, 66.22%, 67.08%, and 69.76%, respectively, after treatment, indicating that tryptophan-like proteins, fulvic acid, and humic acid were also effectively removed. High-throughput sequencing analysis showed the enrichment of microorganisms, such as Proteobacteria, Bacteroidota, and Actinobacteriota, which play important roles in the removal of various pollutants. Therefore, the application of this strategy will enable the practical treatment of micro-polluted water. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drinking Water: Water Quality and Treatment)
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13 pages, 3466 KiB  
Article
Application of Response Surface Methodology to Optimize Coagulation Treatment Process of Urban Drinking Water Using Polyaluminium Chloride
by Mohamed Yateh, George Lartey-Young, Fengting Li, Mei Li and Yulin Tang
Water 2023, 15(5), 853; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15050853 - 22 Feb 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1990
Abstract
Many coagulants such as aluminium sulfate, ferric sulfate, and ferrous sulfate have been investigated in the past, but there is a lack of data on their effectiveness to some specific water quality parameters. This study aimed at investigating the efficiency of the coagulation [...] Read more.
Many coagulants such as aluminium sulfate, ferric sulfate, and ferrous sulfate have been investigated in the past, but there is a lack of data on their effectiveness to some specific water quality parameters. This study aimed at investigating the efficiency of the coagulation water treatment process to remove pollutants such as total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN), and total suspended solids (TSS) from urban drinking water. The polyaluminium chloride (PAC) coagulant was applied to determine the impact of the treatment process on the structure and diversity of these pollutants in urban drinking water. All water samples were collected from the Yangtze River, Baoshan district, Shanghai, China, over a period of three months which coincided with the late summer and early winter periods. Specific to different coagulant characterizations, a preliminary test was performed with three other coagulants, namely, aluminium sulfate, polyaluminium, silicate sulfate, and ferric sulfate to determine their optimal conditions for floc characterization and removal efficiencies. In summary, the overall performance of the PAC coagulant was better than that of the other three coagulants used in the pre-treatment of the sampled water. The obtained results revealed that under the optimum operating conditions, the doses of the PAC were as follows: 20, 35, 50, 65, and 80 mgL−1, respectively. The water temperature and pH were determined by using a pH meter, the TOC and TN determined by using a TOC analyzer, and the TSS by following the ASTM D2540 method. Furthermore, the response surface methodology by the Box–Behnken optimization analysis was applied to coagulant dosage, temperature, pH, and three corresponding dependent factors (TSS, TOC, and TN) to determine the best optimal conditions for the PAC performance. To determine whether or not the quadratic model adequately explained and predicted the response during the coagulation process, an analysis of variance was performed. Multiple optimal factors were identified for the urban drinking water treatment, including a pH value of 6.9, water temperature of 20.1 °C, and a coagulant dosage of 9.7 mgL−1. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drinking Water: Water Quality and Treatment)
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13 pages, 1861 KiB  
Article
The Impacts of Chlorine and Disinfection Byproducts on Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (ARB) and Their Conjugative Transfer
by Cen Kong, Xin He, Meiting Guo, Shunjun Ma, Bin Xu and Yulin Tang
Water 2022, 14(19), 3009; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14193009 - 24 Sep 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1990
Abstract
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are emerging contaminants leading to severe worldwide health problems. Chlorination, a widely used procedure, was extensively explored as one of the main methods to remove ARB and ARGs in recent years. In this study, to [...] Read more.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are emerging contaminants leading to severe worldwide health problems. Chlorination, a widely used procedure, was extensively explored as one of the main methods to remove ARB and ARGs in recent years. In this study, to enrich the analyses of chlorination, several comprehensive effects of the chlorine disinfection system on ARB and their conjugative transfer ability were explored. The results presented that the low dose of chlorine (<3-log inactivation rate) had little influence on the survival of bacteria in terms of their capacity for conjugative transfer and antibiotic resistance. The high dose of chlorine (>3-log inactivation rate) triggered cell membrane changes, with little influence on the bacteria in terms of their antibiotic resistance. However, their capacity for conjugative transfer sharply decreased. Minor consumption of chloramphenicol was achieved with the chlorine dose applied in the disinfection system. Monochloroacetonitrile (MCAN) had limited effects on the frequency of conjugative transfer, indicating that the existence of MCAN would not aggravate the dissemination of ARGs by conjugative transfer. The overall impacts of the chlorine disinfection system with different containments on antibiotic resistance need further investigation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drinking Water: Water Quality and Treatment)
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10 pages, 2183 KiB  
Article
Dual-Frequency Ultrasonic Inactivation of Escherichia coli and Enterococcus faecalis Using Persulfate: A Synergistic Effect
by Natalia Garkusheva, Irina Tsenter, Elena Kobunova, Galina Matafonova and Valeriy Batoev
Water 2022, 14(17), 2604; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14172604 - 24 Aug 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2150
Abstract
Dual-frequency ultrasound (DFUS) has received considerable attention for enhanced inactivation of microbial pathogens for medical treatment, but remains little investigated for water disinfection. This study is focused on inactivation of E. coli and E. faecalis in aqueous solution under dual-frequency ultrasonication at 120 [...] Read more.
Dual-frequency ultrasound (DFUS) has received considerable attention for enhanced inactivation of microbial pathogens for medical treatment, but remains little investigated for water disinfection. This study is focused on inactivation of E. coli and E. faecalis in aqueous solution under dual-frequency ultrasonication at 120 + 1700 kHz using persulfate. Single-frequency ultrasonic inactivation showed the higher efficiency of 1700 kHz, compared to 120 kHz. Under the experimental conditions used, no measurable synergy between two frequencies was observed in the absence of persulfate. A high time-based synergistic effect in terms of total inactivation (5-log) of both bacterial species was achieved by DFUS-activated persulfate with synergistic indices of 1.8–5.0. We assume that this is attributed to increased generation of reactive oxygen species (primarily, sulfate anion (SO4) and hydroxyl (•OH) radicals) as a result of enhanced acoustic cavitation. Radical probing and scavenging tests confirmed the generation of radicals and showed a nearly equal contribution of •OH and SO4. This method could be an attractive alternative to ultraviolet technology for fast and effective water disinfection. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drinking Water: Water Quality and Treatment)
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19 pages, 1131 KiB  
Article
Water Quality Prediction Using KNN Imputer and Multilayer Perceptron
by Afaq Juna, Muhammad Umer, Saima Sadiq, Hanen Karamti, Ala’ Abdulmajid Eshmawi, Abdullah Mohamed and Imran Ashraf
Water 2022, 14(17), 2592; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14172592 - 23 Aug 2022
Cited by 45 | Viewed by 4907
Abstract
The rapid development to accommodate population growth has a detrimental effect on water quality, which is deteriorating. Consequently, water quality prediction has emerged as a topic of great interest during the past decade. Existing water quality prediction approaches lack the desired accuracy. Moreover, [...] Read more.
The rapid development to accommodate population growth has a detrimental effect on water quality, which is deteriorating. Consequently, water quality prediction has emerged as a topic of great interest during the past decade. Existing water quality prediction approaches lack the desired accuracy. Moreover, the available datasets have missing values, which reduces the performance efficiency of classifiers. This study presents an automatic water quality prediction method that resolves the issue of missing values from the data and obtains a higher water quality prediction accuracy. This study proposes a nine-layer multilayer perceptron (MLP) which is used with a K-nearest neighbor (KNN) imputer to deal with the problem of missing values. Experiments are performed, and performance is compared with seven machine learning algorithms. Performance is further analyzed regarding two scenarios: deleting missing values and the use of a KNN imputer to deal with missing values. Results suggest that the proposed nine-layer MLP model can achieve an accuracy of 0.99 for water quality prediction with the KNN imputer. K-fold cross-validation further corroborates this performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drinking Water: Water Quality and Treatment)
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19 pages, 3793 KiB  
Article
Where You Drink Water: An Assessment of the Tennessee, USA Public Water Supply
by Ke Jack Ding, George M. Hornberger, Elaine L. Hill and Yolanda J. McDonald
Water 2022, 14(16), 2562; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14162562 - 20 Aug 2022
Viewed by 4830
Abstract
Monitoring drinking water quality is essential to protect people’s health and wellbeing. In the United States, the Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) database records the occurrence of a drinking water violation regulation in public water systems. A notable shortcoming of SDWIS is [...] Read more.
Monitoring drinking water quality is essential to protect people’s health and wellbeing. In the United States, the Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) database records the occurrence of a drinking water violation regulation in public water systems. A notable shortcoming of SDWIS is the lack of the contaminant concentration level about the allowable maximum contaminant threshold. In this study, we take advantage of both the SDWIS violation database and the contaminants sampling database at the state level to examine the drinking water quality of all kinds of drinking water systems in detail. We obtained sampling data (i.e., the concentration level of contaminants) of public water systems (PWSs) in Tennessee and explored the statistical distribution of contaminant concentration data in relation to the enforceable maximum regulatory contaminant level). We use both SDWIS violation records and actual concentrations of contaminants from the sampling data to study the factors that influence the drinking water quality of PWSs. We find that different types of violations were more frequent in (1) specific geological regions, (2) counties with PWSs that serve a larger population (10,000 to 100,000 people), and (3) places with abundant surface water, such as near a lake or major river. Additionally, the distribution of measured concentrations for many contaminants was not smooth but was punctuated by discontinuities at selected levels, such as at 50% of the maximum contaminant level. Such anomalies in the sampling data do not indicate violations, but more investigation is needed to determine the reasons behind the punctuated changes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drinking Water: Water Quality and Treatment)
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25 pages, 768 KiB  
Article
An Overview to Technical Solutions for Molybdenum Removal: Perspective from the Analysis of the Scientific Literature on Molybdenum and Drinking Water (1990–2019)
by Ricardo Abejón
Water 2022, 14(13), 2108; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14132108 - 1 Jul 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4026
Abstract
A bibliometric analysis using the Scopus database was performed to investigate the research documents published from 1990 to 2019 in scientific sources related to molybdenum in drinking water and determine the quantitative characteristics of the research in this period. The results from the [...] Read more.
A bibliometric analysis using the Scopus database was performed to investigate the research documents published from 1990 to 2019 in scientific sources related to molybdenum in drinking water and determine the quantitative characteristics of the research in this period. The results from the analysis revealed that the number of publications was maintained at a regular production of around 5 papers per year until 2009, followed by a fast linear increase in the production in the period from 2010 to 2016 (29 papers in 2016), but the scientific production regarding this topic was reduced in 2017 and 2018 to recover the production obtained in 2016 once again in 2019. The total contribution of the three most productive countries (USA, China and India, respectively) accounted for around 50% of the total number of publications. Environmental Science was the most common subject (51.4% contribution), followed by Chemistry (26.7% contribution). The research efforts targeted toward the search for technical solutions for molybdenum removal from water are not as important as the ones focused on the identification of molybdenum-polluted water bodies and the analysis of the health effects of the intake of molybdenum. Nevertheless, examples of technological treatments to remove molybdenum from the aqueous solution include the use of adsorption and ion exchange; coagulation, flocculation and precipitation followed by filtration; membrane technologies and biological treatments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drinking Water: Water Quality and Treatment)
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