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Challenges and Treatment Solutions for Small Drinking Water and Wastewater Systems

Free webinars held each month from 2:00-3:00 pm ET (Optional Q&A session from 3:00-3:30 pm ET)

EPA's Office of Research and Development and Office of Water are hosting this monthly webinar series to communicate current small systems research along with Agency priorities. The series is providing a forum for EPA to communicate directly with state personnel and other drinking water and wastewater small systems professionals, which allows EPA to provide training and foster collaboration and dissemination of information. In 2016, the webinars will include presentations from state representatives.

This week's is on:

Combined Ion Exchange for Removal of Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) and Hardness (Presented by Treavor Boyer, Arizona State University). This presentation will provide an overview of combined anion exchange and cation exchange (hereafter combined ion exchange) as a single process to simultaneously remove DOC and hardness. The motivation for pursuing combined ion exchange is to remove multiple contaminants with a single treatment process that generates a single waste or residual stream. Combined ion exchange results will be presented from laboratory experiments and an ongoing pilot plant study. The combined ion exchange process will also be discussed in terms of reactor configuration (i.e., fixed bed or completely mixed), process operating conditions, regeneration efficiency and waste disposal, and appropriateness for small systems.

Capabilities of Biological Treatment for Drinking Water (Presented by Nicholas Dugan, EPA's Office of Research and Development). The biological treatment of drinking water is a process that has the potential to significantly reduce contaminant concentrations while minimizing the generation of treatment residuals. Contaminants of regulatory interest that have shown themselves amenable to removal through biological treatment include ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, and perchlorate. Biological treatment also has the capability to remove dissolved organic material that, though not directly regulated, is a precursor for the production of regulated disinfection byproducts (DBPs). This presentation will discuss the scientific fundamentals of biological treatment and present several case studies that serve to illustrate the capabilities of the process as well as operation and maintenance issues that need to be considered.

About the Presenters

Treavor Boyer, Ph.D. - Dr. Boyer is an Associate Professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University. where his research interest is water sustainability with many research projects on innovative applications of ion exchange technology. Dr. Boyer is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and his research has been sponsored by federal agencies including the Water Innovation Network for Sustainable Small Systems Center (WINSSS). WINSSS is one of two National Centers for Innovation in Small Drinking Water Systems that received EPA grants in 2013 to perform innovative research in small to medium sized drinking water systems. Dr. Boyer earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in environmental engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Florida.

Nicholas Dugan, P.E. - Nick is an engineer in Nick is an environmental engineer with EPA ORD's National Risk Management Research Laboratory in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he specializes in drinking water treatment. In addition to his work with cyanobacteria and cyanobacterial toxins, he has performed or supervised bench- and pilot-scale studies to evaluate the removal of nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, perchlorate, and disinfection byproduct precursors through biological drinking water treatment processes.