The Composition of Dissolved Organic Matter and its Impact on Water Treatment in a Changing Climate

该项目寻求建立对支持经济增长的水供应链的复原力。清洁饮用水需要最少的化学物质和能源来处理，特别是在我们面临气候变化压力的情况下，这对政府2017年《构建我们的工业战略》绿皮书中确定的支撑我们的经济至关重要。在英国，1140万人依靠泥炭地获得饮用水。排出泥炭地的河流中的溶解有机物浓度很高，导致水颜色变深；水色恶化导致违反欧洲联盟饮用水标准，水处理费用增加。它还对健康有影响，因为对高度有色的水进行氯化处理会导致产生致癌的消毒副产品，这些副产品受到严格监管，处理成本非常高。当水色峰值变得过于严重时，水务公司必须为每一个新的处理厂(英国有数百家这样的处理厂处于危险之中)投资数千万英镑的资本，外加运营这些厂的额外费用。与此同时，在河流中处理溶解的有机物质会导致水体的温室气体排放，而政府间气候变化专门委员会(IPCC)的报告中没有充分说明这一点。人们对控制溶解有机物的组成和处理以及饮用水的可处理性的因素了解有限。对于水务公司、政策制定者和社会来说，现在迫切需要了解如何提高水处理的有效性，该项目的成果将有助于优化水处理性能，以应对因气候变化而造成的溶解有机物质量和组成变化带来的威胁；如果不进行研究，水务部门有效处理饮用水的能力以及政府间气候变化专门委员会将泥炭地水排放纳入其气候变化评估的能力将取得有限的进展。该奖学金将探索一种跨学科、创新的解决方案，以解决水务部门需要确定溶解有机物的组成，以便在水处理厂更有效地去除溶解有机物的需要。该项目将在英国范围内进行现场采样、实验室实验，并对首次汇集在一起的非常大的数据集进行分析。将调查泥炭地集水区中溶解有机物的组成和加工，以确定可能改进水处理厂处理工艺的可能性，减少致癌消毒副产品的产生和成本，并使该行业未来免受气候变化对将溶解有机物投入改变为饮用水的影响的影响，从而为水务行业提供短期和长期经济利益。

This project seeks to build resilience to the water supply chain supporting economic growth. Clean drinking water that requires minimal chemical and energy to treat it, particularly as we face stress from climate change, is vital for underpinning our economy as identified by the Government's Green Paper 'Building Our Industrial Strategy' 2017. In the UK 11.4 million people rely on peatlands for their drinking water. Dissolved organic matter concentrations in rivers draining peatlands are high and result in highly coloured water; deterioration in water colour results in breaches of European Union drinking water standards and an increase in water treatment costs. It also has health implications as the chlorination of highly coloured water can result in the production of carcinogenic disinfection by-products which are strictly regulated and very costly to deal with. When water colour peaks become too severe water companies have to invest tens of millions of pounds in capital for every new treatment plant (and there are hundreds of such plants in the UK at risk) plus the additional expense of running those plants. At the same time, in-stream processing of dissolved organic matter leads to greenhouse gas emissions from water bodies that are under-represented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. There is limited understanding of factors that control the composition and processing of dissolved organic matter and the treatability of drinking water. For water companies, policy makers and society there is now an urgent need to understand how water treatment can be made more effective, and the outcomes of this project will help to optimise water treatment performance to deal with threats posed by changes in dissolved organic matter quality and composition as a result of climate change; left unresearched, there would be limited advance in the water sector's ability to efficiently treat drinking water, and in the IPCC's ability to incorporate the peatland water emissions into its assessments of climate change. This Fellowship will explore an interdisciplinary, innovative solution to a focused water sector need to identify the composition of dissolved organic matter in order to conduct more efficient removal of dissolved organic matter at water treatment works. The project will undertake UK-wide field sampling, laboratory experiments and analysis of very large datasets that have been pooled together for the first time. The composition and processing of dissolved organic matter originating in peatland catchments will be investigated, to identify potential improvements to the treatment processes at water treatment works, to reduce the production of carcinogenic disinfection by-productions and costs, and to future-proof the industry to the effects of climate change on changing dissolved organic matter inputs to potable water thus providing both short-term and long-term economic benefits to the water industry.