Engineers Create Water Quality Measuring Tool

Engineers from the University of British Columbia  have created a tool that will help communities measure water quality.

Nilufar Islam, who recently received her PhD from UBC Okanagan, has spent the better part of her career creating methods to improve drinking water quality.

Working with Rehan Sadiq, associate dean of the School of Engineering, and Manuel Rodriguez, from Laval University, she developed a water quality index to improve the interpretation of drinking water quality in distribution networks.

Disinfectants, commonly used in water to ensure it is safe to drink, can react with natural organic matters in the water, or the distribution system, to create disinfection byproducts (DBPs). These DBPs including trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids are known to have potential reproductive and development effects.

“Disinfection is necessary to ensure microbiological water quality, but it can produce DBPs when used excessively. DBPs in municipal water may potentially lead to detrimental health impacts. The question became, how can we make sure that our drinking water contains DBPs within acceptable limit without degrading microbiological water quality?”

Noting it’s almost impossible for the general consumer to interpret complex regulatory violations, Islam and Sadiq created a tool, known as the non-compliance potential (NCP) index, to make interpreting measurements of diverse water quality parameters as easy as possible. The index has been used recently to study water distribution systems in many Canadian cities.

The NCP index is designed to merge difficult to understand data into simple indicators that show municipalities whether their water systems are, or are likely to, contain unwanted byproducts that are created when disinfectants react with organic materials in water system.

“It wouldn’t be possible to examine the whole system at a time, so helping municipal engineers better prioritize operations is a good way to ensure our water quality is maintained.” 

Source: The Morning Star

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Taxonomy

• Technology
• Water Quality
• Water Quality Monitoring