CDM to Complete Water Research Foundation Project 4231 on Biological Drinking Water Treatment
December 10, 2009
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS—The Water Research Foundation has selected CDM for Project 4231: Assessing and Enhancing Biological Filtration. The $780,000 project will produce a monitoring and control toolbox and guidance manual for biological drinking water treatment. CDM will partner with American Water for the research, which will involve broad industry participation, including more than 12 utilities representing at least 20 biological drinking water treatment systems.
The monitoring component of the toolbox will include innovative and standard technologies that can monitor biological activity and associated effects on water quality and stability. The control component will include strategies for operation and optimization of biological drinking water treatment and associated biological activity. The components will be integrated to enable robust process control strategies. The toolbox will be developed in four phases:
- Phase I: Identify and screen potential biological drinking water treatment monitoring and control tools.
- Phase II: Collect and critically evaluate comparable snapshot data from a broad cross-section of treatment systems using a combination of 23 innovative and standard monitoring tools.
- Phase III: Validate a selection of tools over 6 months at four diverse treatment systems.
- Phase IV: Use data collected in the first three phases to develop a practical guidance manual.
The toolbox and guidance manual will be designed to be accessible and practical for drinking water industry professionals, and will be supported by data from numerous full-scale biological drinking water treatment systems. Members of the drinking water community will be able to immediately implement the tools to optimize and control their systems.
This project follows research that CDM is concluding for the Water Research Foundation and the Department of Defense Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP). The firm surveyed utilities on the use of biological processes for drinking water treatment to establish the extent to which biological processes are being used and what technology, regulatory, and customer acceptance issues remain. In addition, the research addressed emerging technologies for biological treatment of perchlorate and nitrate in drinking water. The report from this survey is currently being drafted and will be available on the Water Research Foundation and ESTCP Web sites when complete.