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

该项目旨在建立支持经济增长的供水链的复原力。清洁的饮用水，需要最少的化学品和能源来处理它，特别是当我们面临气候变化的压力时，对于支撑我们的经济至关重要，正如政府的绿色文件“建设我们的工业战略”2017年所确定的那样。在英国，有1140万人依靠泥炭地提供饮用水。排放泥炭地的河流中溶解的有机物浓度很高，导致水的颜色很深;水颜色的恶化导致违反欧洲联盟饮用水标准和水处理费用的增加。它还对健康产生影响，因为对高度着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管制，处理成本非常高。当水色峰值变得过于严重时，水务公司不得不为每个新的处理厂投资数千万英镑的资金（英国有数百个这样的工厂处于危险之中），加上运营这些工厂的额外费用。与此同时，溶解有机物的流内处理导致水体排放温室气体，而这些排放在政府间气候变化专门委员会（气专委）的报告中没有得到充分反映。对控制溶解有机物的组成和加工以及饮用水可处理性的因素的了解有限。对于水务公司、决策者和社会来说，现在迫切需要了解如何使水处理更加有效，该项目的成果将有助于优化水处理性能，以应对气候变化导致的溶解有机物质量和组成变化所构成的威胁;如果不进行研究，水部门有效处理饮用水的能力以及IPCC将泥炭地水排放纳入其气候变化评估的能力将有限。该奖学金将探索一种跨学科的创新解决方案，以确定水处理工程中溶解有机物的组成，从而更有效地去除溶解有机物。该项目将在英国范围内进行实地采样，实验室实验和首次汇集在一起的大型数据集的分析。将调查泥炭地集水区产生的溶解有机物的组成和处理，以确定水处理厂处理过程的潜在改进，减少致癌消毒副产品的产生和成本，并使该行业适应气候变化对饮用水中溶解有机物输入变化的影响，从而提供短期和长期的长期的经济效益水行业。

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.