Fluorescent Dissolved Organic Matter Components as Surrogates for Disinfection Byproduct Formation in Drinking Water: A Critical Review

Abstract

Disinfection byproduct (DBP) formation, prediction, and minimization are critical challenges facing the drinking water treatment industry worldwide where chemical disinfection is required to inactivate pathogenic microorganisms. Fluorescence excitation–emission matrices-parallel factor analysis (EEM-PARAFAC) is used to characterize and quantify fluorescent dissolved organic matter (FDOM) components in aquatic systems and may offer considerable promise as a low-cost optical surrogate for DBP formation in treated drinking waters. However, the global utility of this approach for quantification and prediction of specific DBP classes or species has not been widely explored to date. Hence, this critical review aims to elucidate recurring empirical relationships between common environmental fluorophores (identified by PARAFAC) and DBP concentrations produced during water disinfection. From 45 selected peer-reviewed articles, 218 statistically significant linear relationships (R 2 ≥ 0.5) with one or more DBP classes or species were established. Trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs), as key regulated classes, were extensively investigated and exhibited strong, recurrent relationships with ubiquitous humic/fulvic-like FDOM components, highlighting their potential as surrogates for carbonaceous DBP formation. Conversely, observed relationships between nitrogenous DBP classes, such as haloacetonitriles (HANs), halonitromethanes (HNMs), and N-nitrosamines (NAs), and PARAFAC fluorophores were more ambiguous, but preferential relationships with protein-like components in the case of algal/microbial FDOM sources were noted. This review highlights the challenges of transposing site-specific or FDOM source-specific empirical relationships between PARAFAC component and DBP formation potential to a global model.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of dissolved organic matter and disinfection by-products formation potential of Shengzhong Lake in southwest China

“…This result was consistent with the positive loadings of the Fmax(C1)/DOC, Fmax(C3)/DOC, and Fmax(C4)/DOC on PC1 (Fig. 5a), and the ndings found by previous studies that the aromatic DOM components were the main contributors to the THMs and CHD during chlorination (Fernández-Pascual et al 2023). C2 might be the precursors of HAAs, which was indicated by the signi cantly (P < 0.05) positive correlation between Fmax(C2)/DOC and HAAs-FP (Fig.…”