Date of Award

2-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Environmental Science

First Advisor

Dr. Walid Shorbagy

Second Advisor

Tibor Pal

Third Advisor

Gregory Korshin

Abstract

United Arab Emirates (UAE) as well as most Gulf Countries depends mostly on desalinated sea water as the main source of drinking water. The drinking water disinfection process has been routinely carried out since the turn of the century to destroy pathogenic organisms and prevent waterborne diseases. When chemical disinfection is applied before or after desalination, a number of harmful compounds are formed posing potential risks to the health of human or aesthetic quality of drinking water. As such, a tremendous number of studies have been conducted to identify new alternative methods of disinfecting water without formation of harmful Disinfection by-products (DBPs). Several metal and metal oxide nanoparticles (NPs) have shown significant advantages as potent bactericidal agents. In this study, seven nanoparticles (Silver, Silver-Cupper, Cupper, Carbon Nanotubes, Silicon Dioxide, Magnesium Oxide, and Zinc Oxide) were evaluated in disinfecting drinking water produced from two desalination technologies; namely Multi- Stage Flash (MSF) and Reverse Osmosis (RO). All particles were applied to the water samples in suspension mode and the disinfection strength was evaluated by inspecting the degradation percentages of four types of bacteria; E.coli, Enterobacter, Salmonella, and Enterococci. The levels of four inorganic byproducts; chlorite, chlorate, bromate, and iodate, were identified in all tested samples. A major result found from this study indicated that Ag and Ag-Cu NPs had the highest disinfection efficiency among the tested nanoparticles and chlorate was the most inorganic byproduct formed in desalinated samples but with lower levels than the regulated limit.

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