Radiación UV: Un Desinfectante Alternativo de Aguas

MARISOL D. LABAS, CARLOS A. MARTÍN Y ALBERTO E. CASSANO

Catamarca, Argentina

Conferencia; II Congreso Iberoamericano de Ambiente y Calidad de Vida; 2004

The contamination of waters is a problem to solve. As alternative technology to the conventionaldesinfection processes (toxic) the UV radiation is used. One worked with a bacteria model: Escherichiacoli . The polluted water was treated with low wavelength (253.7 nm) radiation in a laboratory reactorwhere all the significant operating variables were carefully measured and controlled. A modification ofthe Series-Event Model was used to interpret the experimental data which were collected employing fourdifferent levels of the incident radiation fed to the reactor. The developed model is based on a rathercomplex dependence with respect to the Escherichia coli concentration and to the radiation that iseffectively absorbed by the bacteria which was precisely quantified. The mathematical description hasthree parameters: (i) the threshold limit of damage for the bacteria which was found to be equal to 2, (ii)the kinetic constant and (iii) the order with respect to the photonic absorption rate by the bacteria whichwas found equal to 0.2. Total inactivation was reached in all cases for short effective contact times andpredictions from the model agree very well with experimental data in the whole range of investigatedvariables