NUIG helps develop drinking water disinfection

Joint research between NUI Galway and Athlone Institute of Technology has developed high-intensity pulsed light as a novel technology for disinfecting drinking water.

The research has come up with an innovative technology that addresses a key drinking water quality challenge and at the same time provides green economic opportunities for Ireland.

“We are all aware that high quality, safe, sufficient drinking water is essential to daily life, for example for drinking and in food preparation, and that finding solutions to threats to drinking water quality is an imperative,” said Dara Lynott, Deputy Director General of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Ireland has almost 1000 public water supplies, serving 82.1% of the population; the remainder of the population is supplied by group water schemes (6.5%), small private supplies (0.8%) and private wells (10.6%).

At the beginning of this year, more than 20,000 people – on 20 public water supplies – were affected by boil water notices.  The EPA’s current Remedial Action List (May 2015) lists 36 schemes as having “Inadequate treatment for Cryptosporidium” serving 209,015 people.

The recent EPA drinking water report indicated that E.coli was detected in 10 public water supplies, 63 small private supplies and 32 private group water schemes in 2013.  Consequently, this research will be a timely addition to the work in solving these issues.

Professor Neil Rowan, Athlone Institute of Technology, lead investigator of this project, said: “The development of this novel technology enhances our capacity to effectively treat drinking water that may be contaminated with harmful parasites and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

“Pulsed light constitutes a radically new means of both energy delivery and efficient ultraviolet disinfection. Pulses of ultraviolet-rich light can be delivered at up to 100 pulses per second causing irreversible damage to the treated waterborne Cryptosporidium parvum parasite, which is resistant to conventional chlorination. Pulsed Light constitutes a next generation approach to ultraviolet light disinfection.”

The research has been conducted in collaboration with Dr Eoghan Clifford from NUI Galway who is an international expert in wastewater treatment and management.

Key recommendations include:

■ Deploying Pulsed Light as a bolt-on technology will improve the destruction of harmful parasites that may not be eliminated or removed during conventional drinking water treatment processes.

■ Implementing this Pulsed Light technology should also be considered for private water supplies.

This research was conducted in the Bioscience Research Institute at Athlone Institute of Technology and in NUI Galway. The full report is available on the EPA website.