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This article describes a study conducted at Water Factory 21, an advanced treatment plant in Orange County, California. The study was conducted to identify chemical indicators that could be measured relatively inexpensively and used as surrogates for monitoring treatment process efficiency. The collective parameters of chemical oxygen demand (COD), total organic nitrogen (TON), total dissolved solids (TDS), electroconductivity (EC), total organic carbon (TOC), ultraviolet analysis (UVA), and total trihalomethane formation potential (TTHMFP) were compared with each other, and changes in the collective parameters were compared with changes in individual constituents brought about by treatment processes such as lime clarification, air stripping, granular activated carbon (GAC) adsorption, and reverse osmosis. The following conclusions are presented: the collective parameters TOC and EC and the individual chemicals barium, copper, and chloroform appear to be good surrogate chemicals; UVA or COD may serve as substitutes for TOC measurements, but each has limitations to consider; for the lime treatment process, barium has good potential as a surrogate to provide a conservative estimate of heavy metals removal; for the air stripping process, chloroform removal rates provide a conservative estimate of removals that are obtainable for a variety of volatile organic compounds; for GAC treatment, both TOC and chloroform removals provide conservative estimates of the effectiveness of the process and the need for regeneration; for RO treatment, TDS and EC are good indicators of process effectiveness for major ions, but not for heavy metals; copper seems to be a conservative surrogate for removal of heavy metals by RO; TOC is a good indicator for the effectiveness of RO for TOX removal, but has a removal efficiency that is too high to be useful as a surrogate for many organic compounds; for RO, chloroform is a reasonable surrogate for many potentially hazardous individual organic compounds; and TON, TOX, and TTHMFP are useful for indicating the presence of important classes of organic compounds. Includes 13 references, tables, figure.

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Edition: Vol. 76 - No. 10 Published: 10/01/1984 Number of Pages: 9 File Size: 1 file , 1.9 MB