Civil Engineering: "Fine Tuning for Water Purification"
Dr Jan Hofman - Amsterdam Water Supply (AWS), Amsterdam, Netherlands
AWS transforms water from the Rhine River into potable water for approximately 800,000 people in Amsterdam and surrounding areas.
Ozone reactions is the primary disinfection step at AWS. Considered perhaps the most environmentally feasible tool to disinfect water at large scales, ozone (O3) is a pure oxygen molecule with an extra oxygen atom attached. Inherently unstable, it readily drops one oxygen atom to react with micropollutants. It reverts to oxygen in minutes, so the unused ozone vanishes without trace. COMSOL Multiphysics simulations make it easy to avoid or remedy the one byproduct that ozone reaction produces, bromate.