Modification on the conventional procedure to measure AOC in drinking water

Article type: Research Article

Authors: LI, Fu-zhi | SANG, Jun-qiang | ZHANG, Xi-hui | WANG, Zhan-sheng

Affiliations: Research Center for Environmental Engineering & Management, Shenzhen Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China | Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Note: [] Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: Additional phosphorus will be introduced to water sample if the conventional procedure is used to measure assimilable organic carbon (AOC) in drinking water. It has been shown that there are the cases that phosphorus is the limiting nutrient for microbial growth in drinking water. The measured value of AOC would not be able to indicate appropriately the regrowth potential of bacteria in this case. The conventional procedure used to measure AOC was modified to avoid the introduction of additional phosphorus to water sample in this study. It was shown that it was feasible to measure AOC in water using the modified procedure. Furthermore, the measured value of AOC determined by the modified procedure could indicate appropriately the regrowth potential of bacteria in drinking water despite either organics or phosphorus was the limiting nutrient for bacterial regrowth.

Keywords: drinking water, assimilable organic carbon, bacterial regrowth, phosphorus, organics

Journal: Journal of Environmental Sciences, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 996-1000, 2004