While filtration, chlorination, and UV drinking water treatments are commonplace, globally an estimated 1.2 billion people continue to boil their drinking water over inefficient biomass fires instead because it allows them to use available resources paired with a time-tested and trusted method. Although boiling water is culturally well-established, there is vast potential to improve human health, environmental impact, and efficiency by leveraging the fact that a significant reduction in pathogenic microorganisms occurs at temperatures well below boiling through a process known as pasteurization. This paper presents the evaluation of a community-scale, biomass-powered, flow-through water pasteurization system that was designed to heat water to the temperature required for pasteurization to occur before recuperating heat while cooling treated water down to a safe-to-handle temperature. The system is then compared to other common thermal treatment methods including batch-boiling over open fires and improved cookstoves. Results from computational modeling and empirical analysis show that the water pasteurizer significantly increases the overall water treatment capacity (from 7.9 to 411 L/h, adjusted for one hour of treatment via household boiling and operation of the water pasteurizer at steady-state, respectively) and uses far less biomass fuel (from 22 to 5.5 g/L, adjusted for treatment of 1 L of water via household boiling and operation of the water pasteurizer at steady-state, respectively). Notable comparisons to the batch-boiling of water over institutional-sized traditional and improved cookstoves are also demonstrated. Further, the results of fecal indicator reduction through the system (8 log and 6 log reduction of E. coli and bacteriophage MS2, respectively) suggest compliance with US-EPA (6 log and 4 log reduction of E. coli and bacteriophage MS2, respectively) and WHO requirements (effluent concentrations below the detection limit, specified as <1 E. coli CFU/100 mL and <10 bacteriophage MS2 PFU/mL) for the reduction in and effluent concentration of E. coli and bacteriophage for water treatment processes. It is recommended that engineers continue to explore the use of heat transfer and microorganism reduction theory to design technologies that increase the capacity and efficiency for thermal water purification that uses locally-available biomass resources.

Results and conclusions described in the original paper need to be updated in light of new data collected after the original submission. In the original paper, lower pressures were linked with larger kernel apparent areas at 0.68 ms and then a reversal of this trend leading to lower pressure kernels becoming smaller than higher pressure kernels as they decay. In addition, it was noted that apparent area reaches a constant value around 2 ms. When additional data is considered, kernels are indeed larger at lower pressure after 0.68 ms. But, lower pressure kernels tend to remain larger than higher pressure kernels for as long as they are detectable. Additionally, kernel size does not reach a constant value; rather, kernels at all pressures approach zero volume around 3.4 ms. Figure 1 shows volumes of kernels approximated as ellipsoid stacks at varying pressure. Note that as kernels draw in cold surrounding gases they increase in size and decrease in temperature. The volume shown in Figure 1 is referring to the gases in the kernel that are hot enough to emit detectable radiation. Kernel volumes are shown here as they provide a more meaningful spatial metric than apparent area, as was reported in the original paper. In the original paper, the apparent area, radiation emissions, and temperatures were all shown reaching a relatively constant value by around 2 ms. This was caused by an error in the way the data was plotted. Correcting this error and considering additional data, all three of these metrics decrease with time until kernels are no longer detected.In the original paper, intensities are shown decreasing rapidly between 0.68 and 1.36 ms, and then a constant value from 1.36 to 3.4 ms. Additional data, as shown in Figure 2, confirms the rapid decrease in emissions between 0.68 and 1.36 ms, however from 1.36 to 3.4 ms the emissions continue to decrease at a decreased rate. Downloaded by 18.236.198.91 on May 9, 2018 | http://arc.aiaa.org |

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