TY - JOUR
T1 - Contribution of wastewater- versus non-wastewater-derived sources to haloacetonitriles formation potential in a wastewater-impacted river
AU - Khorasani, Hamed
AU - Xu, Jiale
AU - Nguyen, Thuy
AU - Kralles, Zachary
AU - Westerhoff, Paul
AU - Dai, Ning
AU - Zhu, Zhenduo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2021/10/20
Y1 - 2021/10/20
N2 - Population growth and urbanization have led to the increasing presence of treated wastewater effluents in downstream drinking water sources. Drinking water sources influenced by organic matter from upstream wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents are thought prone to the formation of haloacetonitriles (HANs), a group of nitrogenous disinfection by-products (DBPs) that can exhibit higher toxicity than currently regulated carbonaceous DBPs. We develop a framework for studying the HAN formation potential (HAN-FP) considering the WWTP and non-WWTP related sources of HAN precursors, and apply this framework to a representative WWTP-impacted river, the Illinois River, USA. A spatiotemporally-resolved river hydrodynamic and water quality model is developed using HEC-RAS to quantify the contribution of WWTP versus non-WWTP sources of HAN-FP precursors. Results show that non-WWTP sources of HAN-FP are considerable, accounting for up to 78% of HAN-FP concentration. Moreover, the contribution of the two sources varies due to streamflow discharge variability. During lower flows, the contribution of WWTPs drives the high concentration of HAN-FP and during higher flows, the contribution of non-WWTP sources becomes dominant. As a result, a high risk of HAN-FP may exist persistently (HAN-FP concentration is always larger than 9.7 μg/L in this study), not only during low flows but also during high flows due to both wastewater- and non-wastewater-derived HAN-FP sources.
AB - Population growth and urbanization have led to the increasing presence of treated wastewater effluents in downstream drinking water sources. Drinking water sources influenced by organic matter from upstream wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents are thought prone to the formation of haloacetonitriles (HANs), a group of nitrogenous disinfection by-products (DBPs) that can exhibit higher toxicity than currently regulated carbonaceous DBPs. We develop a framework for studying the HAN formation potential (HAN-FP) considering the WWTP and non-WWTP related sources of HAN precursors, and apply this framework to a representative WWTP-impacted river, the Illinois River, USA. A spatiotemporally-resolved river hydrodynamic and water quality model is developed using HEC-RAS to quantify the contribution of WWTP versus non-WWTP sources of HAN-FP precursors. Results show that non-WWTP sources of HAN-FP are considerable, accounting for up to 78% of HAN-FP concentration. Moreover, the contribution of the two sources varies due to streamflow discharge variability. During lower flows, the contribution of WWTPs drives the high concentration of HAN-FP and during higher flows, the contribution of non-WWTP sources becomes dominant. As a result, a high risk of HAN-FP may exist persistently (HAN-FP concentration is always larger than 9.7 μg/L in this study), not only during low flows but also during high flows due to both wastewater- and non-wastewater-derived HAN-FP sources.
KW - Disinfection by-product
KW - Haloacetonitriles
KW - Illinois River
KW - Water quality modeling
KW - Water reuse
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U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148355
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148355
M3 - Article
C2 - 34147808
AN - SCOPUS:85108071613
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 792
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
M1 - 148355
ER -