Abstract
A mechanistic simulation model predicting the response of water distribution systems (WDSs) operated with or without disinfectant residual toward accidental arsenic contamination is developed in this paper. The impacts of chlorination, chloramination, and organic loading to control the oxidation of arsenous acid [As(III)] and the adsorption/desorption of arsenic acid [As(V)] on/from iron pipe walls were simulated by applying the model to two real-world WDSs. The model predicted that during any As(III) contamination event, the arsenic spread in WDSs would engage conservatively in the absence of a residual disinfectant. Due to the swift reactions between chlorine and As(III), maintaining residual chlorine was recognized as an effective strategy to control the soluble As(III) levels. Chloramine was predicted to be less effective than chlorine in causing As(III) oxidation and subsequent As(V) adsorption onto the pipe wall. Besides, under the test conditions considered, the required chloramine dose in the source water had to be 10 times higher to produce equivalent effects in terms of As(III) depletion as the chlorine dose of . The results presented that chlorine formation in chloraminated WDSs via the monochloramine hydrolysis mechanism contributes to As(III) depletion inside the distribution pipes. Therefore, the paper recommends maintaining additional chloramine residual in chlorinated WDSs to control the As(III) spread during arsenic contamination events in the downstream sections.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or code generated and used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Science & Technology of the State of Israel and Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany.
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© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 24, 2021
Accepted: Jun 9, 2021
Published online: Aug 12, 2021
Published in print: Oct 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Jan 12, 2022
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Arsenic
- Chemical compounds
- Chemical elements
- Chemicals
- Chemistry
- Chlorine
- Engineering fundamentals
- Environmental engineering
- Heavy metals
- Infrastructure
- Models (by type)
- Pipeline systems
- Pipes
- Pollution
- Simulation models
- Water and water resources
- Water management
- Water pollution
- Water quality
- Water supply
- Water supply systems
- Water treatment
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