The proposed career development plan seeks to integrate research and education to pioneer innovative techniques for comprehensive characterization of disinfection processes. This research will use Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models as a numerical tool to: a) design and assess the overall disinfection process and b) develop an interactive disinfection education module that will be integrated into the civil and environmental curricula as well as into two new courses, a one-day introductory course for high school students and a four-day course on enhanced-disinfection analysis tools for practicing engineers.
The EPA is considering extensive revisions to the disinfection by-products (DBP) regulations. At the same time, water treatment professionals are faced with the challenging task of improving drinking water quality and reducing the risk of waterborne disease outbreaks.
Under the Surface Water Treatment Rule (SWTR), the EPA has published disinfection regulations for treatment of surface water sources. The basic assumption in this rule is that a specific combination of disinfectant concentration and contact time (CT) will lead to a certain degree of inactivation of the target microorganism. However, these techniques used by EPA to quantify the amount of microbial inactivation have not only been found to be too conservative but may also promote DBP formation.
This research program proposes to use CFD to I) develop and evaluate alternative disinfection models for the prediction of effluent microbial inactivation through continuous flow systems and II) assess the impact of disinfectant injection methods and multiple disinfectant injection points on microbial inactivation and DBP formation. A planned set of pilot- and full-scale testing will help validate the numerical results. Another major component of this research is the development of a protocol that will help engineers customize CFD models for a specific water treatment plant with unique raw water quality conditions and pre-disinfection processes.
The educational plan involves the development of a CFD disinfection-education module. The education module will be built on the foundations of the CFD disinfection model. However, students will not be required to learn CFD modeling. The CFD disinfection-education module will be designed around a graphical user interface (GUI) that will be the primary mode of communication between the user and the CFD model. The education module is composed of three sections: I) power point/video-based disinfection process-lecture series, II) solved disinfection problems and simulated tracer tests, and III) team-based disinfection design projects. Furthermore, a short course on disinfection using a portion of the disinfection-education module will be developed for high school students as well as another course on enhanced disinfection analysis tools for practicing engineers. A dynamic partnership involving consulting engineers, water treatment-plant professionals, and academics will help ensure the success of the various phases involved in this research.
