Water Disinfection Processes with UV Radiation: Study of Photoinactivation and Dark Repair of Escherichia coli

A.R. TROMBERT, H. IRAZOQUI, F. ZALAZAR, Y C. MARTÍN

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Innovation and Management for Sustainable Development, XXII CIIQ 2006-V CAIQ, AAIQ; 2006

Asociación Argentina de Ingeniería Química

One of the non-complete resolved subjects for the potential use of UV as an alternative disinfectant for water treatment, is the potential reactivation of microorganisms that alters the treatment, phenomenon that has a great relevance due to the fact that the residual capacity of the AOPs, in contrast to chlorine, is very small. In order to afford this problem, the present paper proposes a ?kinetic? model for the inactivation of a microbiological contaminant as Escherichia coli, which combines the UV inactivation expressed by the formation of pyrimidine dimers (PD), with the simultaneous dark enzymatic repair mechanism. Besides the standard measurements typically used in this kind of experimental research (bacteria plate count, medium optical characterization, radiation field modeling), in this work molecular biology techniques as REP (Repetitive extragenic palindromic) ? PCR (polymerase chain reaction) were applied to improve the interpretation of experimental data. The model shown a qualitative good fitting with the experimental results, to understood some ?anomalous? behaviour reported in the literature