A NOVEL, LOW COST, SPECTROPHOTOMETER PROBE FOR MULTl PARAMETER EN-PIPE ON-LINE WATER QUALITY MEASUREMENTS

摘要

Sufficient supply of safe drinking water has become more and more difficult in many regions over the last years. According to the UN World Water Development Report, nearly. 1 billion people worldwide have no access to controlled drinking water sources [1]. Close to 50% of the global population live in regions where ground water is used as primary source for drinking water, threatening public health with high organic and microbiological loads [2]. The risk of severe effects of unsafe drinking water to public health is not restricted to developing countries but also exists for industrial countries where pipe leakage, accidental or intentional anthropogenic activities are some of the causes for unsafe drinking water. Water monitoring allows detecting abnormalities in the water quality and is a precondition for efficient and safe drinking water supply. Traditional analytical methods of periodic grab samples allow water monitoring on a coarse time grid only and might not capture single pollution events. These methods require high work time input of trained personnel and are unsuitable for mass deployment in large distributed water networks and also in developing countries [3].