A modified robustness index for assessing operational performance of drinking water treatment plants: a comparative study within a new regulatory framework
Federica De Marines, Santo Fabio Corsino, Alida Cosenza, Marco Capodici, Michele Torregrossa, Gaspare Viviani
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) are facing emerging challenges affecting raw water quality. In addition, the new regulatory framework (EU 2184/2020) sets stricter limits for turbidity and percentile statistics for continuous compliance, demanding greater robustness of the treatment processes. To achieve this aim, this study proposes a turbidity robustness index (TRI), named TRI95B, to be used as a warning tool for detecting deviations from water quality standards. TRI95B has been compared with the TRIs existing in the literature. Furthermore, the TRI95B validation has been performed by a three-year monitoring dataset of a full-scale DWTP. The proposed TRI95B index has two key novelties compared to the existing indices required for adapting to the new drinking water regulation: i. introduces the 95th percentile as a statistical indicator; ii. considers an additional term that sets an alert when a threshold value is exceeded.The comparison results suggest a better correspondence to the real plant performances of TRI95B than the other TRIs. Indeed, both the sensitivity and specificity of TRI95B were significantly higher than the other TRIs, indicating a better capacity to correctly classify both positive and negative cases. Moreover, while the previous TRIs identify a critical operating condition when the turbidity goal was significantly exceeded, TRI95B highlights a failure condition at a lower discrepancy. Therefore, TRI95B is also able to identify short-duration and low magnitude failures, thus coping with the purpose of the new regulation for drinking water.
期刊介绍:
Water Research, along with its open access companion journal Water Research X, serves as a platform for publishing original research papers covering various aspects of the science and technology related to the anthropogenic water cycle, water quality, and its management worldwide. The audience targeted by the journal comprises biologists, chemical engineers, chemists, civil engineers, environmental engineers, limnologists, and microbiologists. The scope of the journal include:
•Treatment processes for water and wastewaters (municipal, agricultural, industrial, and on-site treatment), including resource recovery and residuals management;
•Urban hydrology including sewer systems, stormwater management, and green infrastructure;
•Drinking water treatment and distribution;
•Potable and non-potable water reuse;
•Sanitation, public health, and risk assessment;
•Anaerobic digestion, solid and hazardous waste management, including source characterization and the effects and control of leachates and gaseous emissions;
•Contaminants (chemical, microbial, anthropogenic particles such as nanoparticles or microplastics) and related water quality sensing, monitoring, fate, and assessment;
•Anthropogenic impacts on inland, tidal, coastal and urban waters, focusing on surface and ground waters, and point and non-point sources of pollution;
•Environmental restoration, linked to surface water, groundwater and groundwater remediation;
•Analysis of the interfaces between sediments and water, and between water and atmosphere, focusing specifically on anthropogenic impacts;
•Mathematical modelling, systems analysis, machine learning, and beneficial use of big data related to the anthropogenic water cycle;
•Socio-economic, policy, and regulations studies.