The Disinfection Group aims to create, exchange and transfer the knowledge and experience of disinfection-related issues in water, wastewater, sludge or excreta.
Public health and water security are amongst the most important issues in our water future. Disinfection, which plays a key role in both, is critical to the prevention of disease transmission via water, wastewater and sludge. It is an essential process for achieving and maintaining the bio-safety in drinking water, wastewater and sludge.. However, noted are the potential deleterious impacts of disinfection, including the formation of disinfection by-products, which need to be controlled to avoid or reduce any excess cancer risk related to the process. Consequently, we need an applied and academic understanding, as well as an integrated “one water” approach to address the issues noted.
The core issues of this group include: 1) Integrating available disinfection technologies to provide multiple barriers to waterborne diseases and furthering understanding of microbial control mechanisms; 2) Retrofitting the current disinfection processes to fully or partially provide control of disinfection by-products; 3) Maintaining the residual disinfectant in distribution systems for controlling the bacteria regrowth and corrosion; 4) Applying technologies and designing disinfection facilities for multiple demands of drinking water, wastewater, reclaimed wastewater, grey (gray) water, and harvested rainwater; 5) Developing disinfection processes/practices that demand less energy and chemicals, thus making them more suitable for decentralised treatment and households developing regions of the world.
The key innovations or developments in the field of disinfection include: 1) t The role and efficacy of disinfection in water reuse, which is an important and rapidly growing component of many water supply portfolios; 2) Extending the scope of disinfection from the traditional chemical reagents to the physical barrier for pathogens, such as membrane, UV and irradiation; 3) evaluating disinfection under a different paradigm, taking an integrated and total water management approach to pathogen inactivation, regulated and emerging DBPs and corrosion control in distribution systems.
The Disinfection Group’s strategic plan includes reinvigorating its membership participation, encouraging the exchange of knowledge and inspiring the collaboration between water industries, academia, government and public. The group encourages achievements in disinfection to include practical solutions for the low-income countries as well as leading-edge technologies and theories.
