DRINKING WATER

UV Disinfection for Drinking Water

Ensuring proper drinking water is a vital step to protect the public health from dangerous microorganisms. The demand for cost-efficient solutions to provide clean drinking water are at an all-time high and will only increase in the future. UV disinfection solves this safety challenge, being able to meet the strictest requirements regarding bacteria and virus protection.

Heavily chlorinated drinking water has proven to lead to several health complications such as respiratory diseases. While chlorine has proven to be ineffective against Cryptosporidium and Giardia, UV is able to inactivate these pathogens easily with very low doses. This means that UV treatment is capable of inactivating all bacteria, viruses, molds, and spores that may be present in the drinking water.

Operational efficiency is one of the core drivers within the drinking water market. Many facilities and organizations now invest on new assets that yields return on investment based on their operational savings. This has led to manufacturing having to detail their whole life costs over 20 years. Choosing UV as the disinfection method ensures optimal CAPEX and OPEX compared to its alternatives, making UV the best solution for a wide range of installations.

With the support of a well-designed disinfection policy and network, UV can be used as a primary disinfection barrier. In this case, the bias of the disinfection is placed on the UV system with a small residual of chemical disinfection being dosed into the water at the treatment outlet when the flow enters the distribution network, potentially removing the need for contact tanks entirely. This approach can significantly reduce the plant’s overall operational costs as well as result in improved performance.

The second option is to use UV as a part of the multibarrier disinfection policy that uses UV to target specific pathogens, being impossible or too expensive for other technologies to achieve. This could be the use of UV as an exclusive barrier for cryptosporidium, which other technologies such as chlorination have been proven to be inefficient against.