Characterization of Natural Organic Matter and Disinfection By-products Formed After Chemical Disinfection of Water

Chemical disinfection of water has been commonly applied to protect public health from waterborne infectious diseases. Chemical disinfectants are strong oxidants that react with the building blocks or alter the metabolism of pathogenic organisms, killing them as the final consequence. These oxidative reactions are not substrate-specific, and thus, all organic and inorganic constituents of the water may be involved. The changes of the organic matter and the disinfection by-products (DBPs) formed are dependent of the disinfectant used and the organic and inorganic precursors present in the water. The present work aims at investigating these aspects in disinfected water from four water treatment plants in Sweden. The waterworks investigated were selected according to the type of disinfectant used (chlorine or chloramine) and the characteristics of water entering the plant (groundwater, surface water, or artificially recharged groundwater). Specific and generic extraction approaches, and target, suspect and non-target screening approaches using advanced mass spectrometry have been used to investigate DBPs formed and to characterize the organic matter before and after the chemical disinfection process. Acknowledgments: CP acknowledges support from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences through the August T Larsson Guest Researcher Programme. This work was supported by the Government of Catalonia (Consolidated Research Groups 2017 SGR 01404- Water and Soil Quality Unit) and by the Swedish Research Council FORMAS (grant 2013-01077).