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Impact of Water Quality on Solar Disinfection (SODIS): Investigating a Natural Coagulant Pretreatment on the Photoinactivation of Escherichia coli

Solar water disinfection (SODIS) is the process of treating microbiologically contaminated water in clear plastic bottles through exposure to sunlight. One of the major limiting factors of this treatment is source water quality. This work investigates the impact of organic matter and turbidity on SODIS efficiency. Organic matter was found to decrease bacterial inactivation to a much greater extent than the presence of inorganic particles. The ability of moringa oleifera seed emulsion to clarify source waters was investigated as a coagulation pretreatment. This coagulant is most effective in highly turbid, high humic content waters, and achieves up to 1-log bacterial removal. The combined moringa oleifera coagulation-SODIS treatment sequence was tested in highly coloured natural source water and was found to reduce the sunlight exposure time required by up to 2 hours. Treated water should be consumed immediately following the individual or combined treatments due to the potential for bacterial regrowth.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/25518
Date30 December 2010
CreatorsWilson, Sarah
ContributorsAndrews, Susan
Source SetsUniversity of Toronto
Languageen_ca
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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