Efficacy of Pulsed UV-Light Treatment on Wastewater Effluent Disinfection and Suspended Solid Reduction

Abstract

AbstractDisinfection of municipal wastewater effluents is a critical component of water pollution control. To achieve this, novel alternative disinfection technologies have been getting attention recently such as pulsed ultraviolet (UV) light, which can be used to inactivate microorganisms in a short time. Therefore, the research reported in this paper was undertaken to determine the efficacy of pulsed UV light for inactivation of Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis spores, in synthetic and real municipal wastewater effluent. The results with synthetic municipal wastewater effluent demonstrated that complete inactivation was obtained with an 8-cm sample distance, 30-mL sample volume, and 15-s time combination for E. coli [8.53log10 colony-forming units (CFUs)/mL reduction], whereas a 15-mL sample volume (with the same sample distance and treatment time) was required for B. subtilis (7.57log10CFU/mL reduction) at total energy dose of 10.9 J/cm2. A response surface model was developed to predict the ina...