The Smart Water Meter

The Smart Water Meter: A new method to monitor fouling issue

Chen, Z.

van der Meer, W.G.J. (mentor)
Liu, G. (mentor)
Witkamp, G.J. (mentor)

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Water Management

2016-08-11

The drinking water distribution network is a sealed and pressurized system which attached numerous biofilm and microorganism due to the long-time operation. In a foreseeable future, Oasen will adopt reverse osmosis to treat drinking water and thus the nutrient (biodegradable compounds) in drinking water will be slight. In that case, biofilms used to attach on pipelines may die and detach from pipes and these part of biofilm may clog consumers’ water meter. To avoid the potentially clogged water meter issues, a new monitor method, the Smart Water Meter should be used to monitor the fouling issues during the distribution process. This research, supervised by TU Delft and Dutch drinking water company Oasen, is an attempt to verify the Smart Water Meter as a suitable method to monitor fouling issues and figure out what matters contribute to the water meter clogging issues. Three objectives are included in this research: * The first objective is to verify Smart Water Meter as a suitable method to monitor water quality and fouling issues during the distribution process. In this research, the pressure drop is the key factor to detect the fouling issue and two equipment, filtrated clogging potential (FCP) and crossflow clogging potential (CCP), are accepted to monitor the fouling issues both in a short term and long term. * The second objective is to analyze what matters cause the pressure drop/filter resistance increase. This part analysis is to figure out the factors contribute to the potential fouling issues. Research can be divided into three parts, physical part, chemical part, and biological part. Physical part stress on explaining from pressure drop and filter resistance. Chemical part focus on determining the chemical compounds of fouling and biological part centralizes on ATP concentration. A better and comprehensive result could be obtained from the combining of analysis from these three aspects. * The third objective is to investigate the characteristics of these matters, this part analysis is the extension of the second objective and this part research concentrate on the quantities of each matter. In physical part, microscope and particle counter are used to calculate the total clogging particle number. In chemical part, ICP-MS is adapted to detect the concentration of chemicals. This research indicate that the Smart Water Meter is a suitable method to monitor fouling issues during the distribution process. In FCP experiment, filter resistance increased 15% in 16 hours operation time while in CCP experiment, the pressure drop grew from 0 to 10mbar in 27 days. Meanwhile, the clogging mechanisms of FCP and CCP are different; Particle clogging is the most important contributor for FCP while Biofouling plays a significant role in CCP. Therefore, FCP is more suitable to monitor the particles such as detached biofilm while CCP can detect the microorganism regrowth. Further, no relationship can be found between inorganic matters and clogging issues for both FCP and CCP experiments in this research, which indicate inorganic matter is not a primary contributor to fouling issues. Results also indicate that drinking water quality from consumers’ tap is greatly influenced by the distribution process. Both the biofilm and hydraulic retention time will impact the water quality from consumer’s tap.

fouling
distribution process
pressure drop
drinking water

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2c9e9905-c35a-4749-9b9f-c92362384979

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2016 Chen, Z.