CONTACT: Robin Collins
603-862-1407
WRITER: Virginia Stuart
603-862-3102
UNH'S NEW PORTABLE WATER-TESTING UNIT WILL SAVE TIME AND MONEY FOR PUBLIC WATER SYSTEMS
DURHAM--A water treatment technology center at the University of New Hampshire has designed and built a new portable testing unit that could be instrumental in saving tens of thousands of dollars for small municipal water systems. The new unit will be put through its paces at the Manchester Water Works over the next month.The UNH Water Treatment Technology Assistance Center (WTTAC), one of nine federally funded centers in the country, researches and develops innovative water treatment technologies and then transfers those technologies to engineers and operators of small public water systems. The WTTAC, which mainly serves New England, will be one of only five centers to retain funding in the fall.
The center has been authorized by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Sanitation Foundation to act as an independent third party in testing water filtration units for both manufacturers and the towns who buy the units. Currently, a town that wants to buy a new filtration unit must go through a lengthy and costly piloting process, in which the unit under consideration is tested at the town's own water works--sometimes for as long as a year.
"The portable testing unit will provide the flexibility to make both pilot and full-scale evaluations of treatment technologies on site," notes Robin Collins, center director and professor of civil engineering. "For towns, there will be the potential to drastically shorten the evaluation process and save thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. The portable unit will also help our center be more productive, using and evaluating more systems." In addition, the portable testing unit could be taken to individual towns to help diagnose water-quality problems.
The unit consists of two large boards covered with pipes, tubing, and meters. One board is used to test untreated water coming into a filtration unit, and the other will test the treated water coming out. The system can also be challenged by introducing harmless particles the same size as pathogens that might be found in a water supply. The results, once approved by the EPA and National Sanitation Foundation, would give towns verification of the capability of a particular model of filter. Using this information, a town might be able to forgo the piloting process entirely or have a much briefer testing period.
The UNH team has taken the portable testing unit to the Manchester Water Works to observe it in action. "We will take raw water from the lake, and run it through each of three filtration units, testing for turbidity, particle counts, pH, temperature, conductivity, and flow," says project director Mark Arenberg, a graduate student in civil engineering. Like most of the projects at the center, this one is a collaboration among UNH researchers, towns, and businesses. The researchers are testing a membrane filter manufactured by the Pall Company and two diatomaceous earth filters produced by Sepramantics.
The WTTAC is investigating other innovative technologies, including river-bank filtration and the combined use of membrane filtration and ultraviolet light for water treatment.
Cutline Have water-testing unit, will travel. UNH civil engineers have designed and built a portable water testing unit to evaluate the performance of water filtration units and to diagnose water-quality problems in small municipal systems. Shown here with half of the unit are (from left) Robin Collins, professor of civil engineering and director of the UNH Water Treatment Technology Assistance Center; Peter Dwyer, research engineer; Jeffrey Provost of Litchfield, graduate student; and Mark Arenberg, project director. The UNH team will be testing the equipment over the next month at the Manchester Water Works. Missing from the photo is Larry Brannaka, co-director of the center and principal investigator for the project.(UNH Photo by Doug Prince)