Solar Energy 77 (2004) 657664 www.elsevier.

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Solar disinfection of contaminated water: a comparison of three small-scale reactors

O.A. McLoughlin a, S.C. Kehoe b, K.G. McGuigan c, E.F. Duy c, F. Al Touati c, W. Gernjak d, I. Oller Alberola d, S. Malato Rodrguez d, L.W. Gill a,*
a

Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland b Department of Surgery, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin 9, Ireland c Department of Physiology and Medical Physics, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin 2, Ireland d Plataforma Solar de Almera-CIEMAT, Ctra. Senes Km.4, 04200 Tabernas, Almera, Spain Received 2 December 2003; received in revised form 26 July 2004; accepted 28 July 2004 Available online 2 September 2004 Communicated by: Associate Editor Claudio Estrada-Gasca

Abstract This paper compares three dierent collector shapes for the disinfection of water heavily contaminated with Escherichia coli (K-12). Tests were carried out in real sunlight using laboratory scale reactors to determine the performance of dierent reector proles. The reactors were constructed using Pyrex tubing and aluminium reectors of compound parabolic, parabolic and V-groove proles. Results have shown that the compound parabolic reector promoted a more successful inactivation of E. coli than the parabolic and V-groove proles. Tests were also carried out to assess the improvement to disinfection which could be achieved using TiO2 coated Pyrex rods xed within the reactors. This technique, however, yielded a slight enhancement in the compound parabolic reactor but no benet to overall disinfection performance in either the parabolic or V-groove reactors. These results show that the use of UV sunlight to disinfect contaminated drinking water in a full-scale continuous ow solar reactor is both promising and an appropriate technology for developing countries but that the inclusion of a xed photocatalyst within the reactor tubes has yet to prove any signicant improvement. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Solar photocatalysis; Parabolic reector; Disinfection; E. coli

1. Introduction It is well acknowledged that the provision of an adequate potable water supply is fundamental to public health. In developing countries water related diseases account for the majority of premature deaths which in many cases could be alleviated by the provision of an

Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 353 1 6081047. E-mail address: gilll@tcd.ie (L.W. Gill).

0038-092X/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.solener.2004.07.004

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adequate supply of water for both drinking and washing (Cairncross and Feachem, 1993). In such situations there are often neither the nances nor the resources to construct and maintain the types of water treatment processes used in more industrialised countries which tend to be both energy and chemical intensive. Hence, an appropriate water treatment process should be designed which requires little or no energy, uses locally available resources and can be constructed of low maintenance, durable materials. This project involves using solar radiation, an abundant resource in most developing countries, to disinfect water supplies. The potential for using dierent solar-based drinking water treatment processes has been explored by researchers throughout the 1990s (Goswami, 1995, 1997; Cooper and Goswami, 1998a,b). In particular the use of solar radiation to disinfect drinking water has been studied using batch systems where water is stored in a small clear container and exposed to sunlight. Whilst, studies have shown the eectiveness of this batch process in eld trials (Conroy et al., 1996; Sommer et al., 1997) the volume of water disinfected in each bottle is limited and depends upon the dedication of each user. There have also been several attempts to enhance the process by encouraging photocatalytic processes in the water by introducing chemical additives such as methylene blue (Cooper and Goswami, 1999) and more comprehensively titanium dioxide both in suspension (Block et al., 1997; Cooper et al., 1997) and with xed inserts (Salih, 2002). Research into the development of a centralised water disinfection system at a rural village scale using continuous ow reactors however, has been limited with only a few experimental trials having been carried out to date: a trial in Beirut using glass tubing without any reector (Acra et al., 1989), and a pilot scale compound parabolic collector system in Mexico (Vidal and Diaz, 2000) which reported disinfection rate constants for E. coli of approximately twice those reported in the Beirut trial. Evidence of studies into using a photocatalyst for disinfection in continuous ow processes seems to have been restricted to one study which did not nd any signicant enhancement to disinfection eciency when titanium dioxide was added to the process ow as a suspension (Vidal et al., 1999). Furthermore, no evidence has been found of studies into using a xed photocatalyst in continuous ow systems designed for disinfection. The aim of this research was to determine the disinfection kinetics of dierent small-scale collector systems under real sunlight conditions. Three dierent collector proles were tested: compound parabolic (CP), parabolic (P) and V-groove (V). Experiments were then carried out to assess whether any enhancement to the overall disinfection eciency could be gained by adding a photocatalyst in the form of titanium dioxide (TiO2) coated rods xed at the focal point of each tube. The

applicability of the method chosen to x the TiO2 photocatalyst into such a continuous ow disinfection system was also evaluated.

2. Materials and methods 2.1. Experimental set-up Three separate reactors were used during the experiments, all congured as continuous ow, recirculating systems. The reactors were positioned as non-tracking, static systems with each reector aperture tilted to the latitudinal angle (37) and the tubes aligned in an eastwest orientation to maximise sunlight capture. The reactors consisted of a series of six parallel polished aluminium reectors, 9.6 mm inner diameter Pyrex tubing, a centrifugal pump, reservoir and connections. Each reactor had a dierent reector prole: V-groove, parabolic or compound parabolic (see Fig. 1) and 250 mm long Pyrex tubes were mounted at the focal points within the compound parabolic and parabolic reectors. In the V-groove (45 angle) the centre of the tube was positioned 14 mm above the base. The collector areas for the V-groove parabolic and compound parabolic reactors was 0.057 m2, 0.042 m2 and 0.057 m2, respectively. In all experiments a total volume of 1 l of water was circulated at a constant ow rate of 2.8 l/min through the solar reactor via a recirculation pump connected to a reservoir in which the volume was stable at 600 ml. The reservoir with its inlet and outlet tubes were covered from the sunlight in all experiments and temperature readings were constantly measured in the reservoir. For the photocatalytic experiments, 2 mm glass rods

(a)

(b)

(c)
Fig. 1. Cross-section through reactors: (a) compound parabolic, (b) parabolic and (c) V-groove.

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coated with TiO2 were xed at the centre of each Pyrex tube running the whole length of the reactor (see Section 2.4). This gave a xed illuminated volume of 203 ml without rods or 197 ml with the rods in place. 2.2. Preparation of the photocatalyst In order to test the eectiveness of using TiO2 as a photocatalyst in the reactors, it was decided to evaluate a design whereby a stable coating of TiO2 could be xed in the reactor. Typically, photocatalysts are added into the process liquid as a suspension which has proved successful in several applications such as the breakdown of persistent organic compounds (Konstantinou and Albanis, 2003; Malato et al., 2002a). However, this is not considered to be a particularly attractive solution for a small-scale rural water supply system in a developing country since the TiO2 will require some form of separation and recovery process at the end of the solar reactor before the water is suitable for consumption. This research has looked at the concept of coating small 2 mm diameter glass rods with TiO2 which are then xed along the centre of each reactor tube. A stable coating of TiO2 onto the glass rods was achieved using the following technique. The rods were initially rinsed with distilled water and then placed into a jar lled with 1% detergent solution which was sonicated for 15 min. They were then rinsed with distilled water again and sonicated for a further 15 min. This step was repeated three times. The rods were then dried in an oven at 105 C before being weighed. A 1% solution of Degussa P-25 TiO2 was prepared with distilled water and sonicated for 15 min. Each rod was swirled in the TiO2 solution until coated. The rods were then placed into an oven for 10 min until the layer dried. This step was repeated 15 times to ensure an adequate coating. The rods were then annealed at 250 C overnight. The rods were xed into position at the centre of the Pyrex tubes in each reactor before exposure to sunlight in the tests. The rods were typically exposed to water velocities in the tubes of up to 0.67 m/s which would promote high localised shear stresses on the coating. However, during all trials the coating appeared to be stable. The amount of photocatalyst attached to the rods per unit illuminated volume was found by removing the rods after use, drying in an oven at 105 C and weighing them. These rods were then cleaned of all traces of TiO2, dried in an oven again and then reweighed to calculate the dierence in mass. The appropriate calculations return a concentration of TiO2 coating per unit illuminated volume to be 94 mg/l. 2.3. Bacterial preparation and enumeration E. coli K-12 (ATCC 10798) was used as the model bacterium in these studies due to its widespread use as

a faecal indicator (ASM, 1997). A single colony was inoculated in 50 ml of sterile Luria broth (Sigma L3522) and incubated statically at 37 C for 18 h to yield stationary phase culture. The culture was then washed by centrifugation three times at 3000 rpm for 15 min to ensure the elimination of the broth medium. Finally, the pellet was resuspended and diluted to a nal concentration of 1 109 CFU/ml in sterile water. One millilitre of bacteria was then added to each litre of water used in the experiment to give an initial concentration of 1 106 CFU/ml. The number of viable cells in the water samples taken during the experiment were determined by plating an appropriate dilution on Luria Agar (Sigma L3147) and counting colonies after incubation at 37 C for 18 h. Quality control and assurance guidelines described in the Standard Methods (APHA, 1999) were strictly followed and the limit of detection achieved was approximately 4 CFU/ml. 2.4. Experimental procedure The rst set of trials investigated the comparative disinfection kinetics of the three separate reactors described above. A second set of trials then repeated the rst trials but this time the reactors had the 2 mm TiO2 coated rods xed at the centre of the tubes to assess any enhancement that could be gained from an additional photocatalytic disinfection mechanism. The experiments were carried out during June and July 2003 at Plataforma Solar de Almera, Spain. At the beginning of each experiment 1 l of ltered MilliQ water, inoculated with E. coli K-12, was admitted into the reservoir. After this inoculation the water was circulated through the photoreactor tubes in the dark until a complete mix and a uniform concentration of bacteria was achieved throughout the reactor. The system can be hydraulically characterised as a Continuously Stirred Tank Reactor (the reservoir) in series with a plug ow solar reactor, which means that the theoretical time to achieve a complete mix was approximately 1 min. These hydraulic characteristics had been conrmed previously using Residence Time Distribution (RTD) analysis from a tracer study. However, the system was left running in the darkness for at least 2 min after inoculation to account for any discontinuities in the presumed ow regime. The initial uniform bacterial concentrations in all tests were approximately 1 106 CFU/ml. At the start of each trial a sample was taken from the reservoir at time, t = 0 and the reactor was uncovered. This sample was enumerated and then kept in the dark as a control throughout the trial duration. The control was enumerated several times throughout the trial period to ensure that the bacteria die-o in the reactor was due to the sunlight and not some other mechanism such as contamination of the water for example. The water was then

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recirculated with the reactor exposed to the sunlight for 1 h with samples being taken at 10 min intervals which were taken directly to the laboratory for bacterial enumeration. Each reactor had the same experiment repeated three times. The average of these three results was then used to calculate the overall performance for each reactor. It was conrmed that no bacterial die-o took place outside of the tubes (due to the action of circulation for example), by three control trials carried out in the dark. The ow rate through the Pyrex tubes equates to Reynolds numbers of 7.38.9 103 (water temperature 2838 C) which achieves a transitional-turbulent ow regime and thus ensures total mixing within the system. Operated in such a conguration, each bacteria on average would circulate round the system 2.8 times per minute, spending 17.1 s in the dark and 4.3 s in the light per revolution. The water velocity in the photoreactor tubes was 0.67 and 0.64 m/s during the trials with and without the TiO2 rods, respectively. Solar radiation measurements were made using a 300 400 nm broadband UV radiometer (CUV3 Kipp and Zonen, Netherlands) located on site. The average global UV intensity readings ranged between 22 and 44 W/m2 and the average UV intensity during the trials was calculated to be 38.8 W/m2.

ent days. This can be taken into account by presenting the results as bacterial inactivation (log(CFU/ml)) against cumulative solar UV radiation dose, (see Fig. 2(b)). The accumulated incident UV radiation has been calculated by using Eq. (1) below (Malato et al., 2002a). QUVn QUVn1 Dtn UVGN A VT Dtn tn tn1 1

3. Results and discussion 3.1. Solar disinfection Data from the rst set of trials using the original reactors (without the TiO2 coated rods) is presented in Fig. 2(a) and (b) showing the survival of the bacterial populations within the three reactor congurations as a function of time and cumulative solar UV dose. Each data point represents an average of the three repeated experiments carried out for each reactor conguration. The results in Fig. 2(a) are plotted as bacterial inactivation (log(CFU/ml)) against both experimental time and illuminated time (inset) where illuminated time is calculated by the volume inside the reactor area as a function of the overall reactor volume. A 34-log reduction of the bacterium E. coli K-12 occurred in all three reactors within the 60 min experimental time, which equates to 12 min illuminated time. This result alone suggests that disinfection of water supplies by sunlight can potentially be achieved in a low cost continuous ow process. There is a clear dierence between the compound parabolic (CP) reactor which achieved a slightly better inactivation rate compared to both the parabolic (P) and V-groove (V) reactor which promoted almost identical kinetics. These results, however, mask the fact that the solar intensities received by each reactor was continually changing, both during the trials and also between dier-

where QUVn, QUVn1is the cumulative irradiated UV energy received per litre of sample at times n and n 1; Dtn the time interval between two sampling times; UVGN the average incident radiation on the irradiated area; A the irradiated area; VT the total circulating volume. Linear regression lines have been plotted to each data set (modelling an exponential inactivation kinetic) giving a reasonable t with R2 values of 0.94, 0.97 and 0.97 for the V, C and CP reactors, respectively. These lines reveal the relative inactivation rate constants of 1.05, 1.04 and 1.34 l/kJUV for the three dierent reactor congurations. This conrms the same order of eciency between the reactors, as seen in Fig. 2(a), whereby the CP performs more eciently than the V and P reector shapes which behave almost identically. These results mean that 2.2 kJUV/l of UV radiation incident on both the V and P reactors was required to achieve a 1-log reduction of bacterial population whereas only 1.6 kJUV/l was required to produce the same result in the CP reactor. It should also be noted that these results also take into account the dierences in collector area (and thus solar ux) between the P reactor and CP and V reactors, since the cumulative UV dose is a function of both the intensity and the irradiated area thus providing the valid comparisons between all the reactor proles. The experimental results can also be expressed in terms of standardised t30W solar UV radiation whereby the actual experimental duration is normalised mathematically (see Eq. (2)) to a hypothetical constant UV radiation intensity of 30 W/m2 by introducing correction factors according to radiation intensity (Malato et al., 2002b). A UV intensity of 30 W/m2 resembles conditions around a sunny noon in the vicinity of Almera. t30W;n t30W;n1 Dtn UV V i 30 V T 2

where t30W,n t30W,n1 is the normalised illumination time of samples at times n and n 1; Vi the illuminated volume. The results of bacterial die-o against t30W again replicate the same trends between the reactors. The resultant kinetics enable a theoretical time to be calculated for the complete inactivation of 1 l of water at a starting concentration of 1 106 E. coli CFU/ml at a standard solar UV radiation of 30 W/m2, giving 20.5 min, 26.1 min and 25.9 min for the CP, P and V reactors, respectively. Hence, the CP reector promotes a 21% to the process eciency with respect to the V and P reectors. These

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8 7 6 V (R 2 =0.94 )
log (CFU/ml)

log (CFU/ml)

5 4 3 2 1 0 0 10 20 30 40 50 P (R 2 =0.97 ) CP (R 2 =0.97 )

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 0 5 10 Illuminated Time (mins) 15

CP

60

70

80

(a)
7 6 5 P (R 2 =0.97 )

Time (mins)

V (R 2 =094 )

log (CFU/ml)

4 3 2 1 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

CP P V

CP (R 2 =0.97 )

(b)

Q (kJ UV /litre)

Fig. 2. (a) Data shown as inactivation of E. coli (log(CFU/ml)) against experimental time and illuminated time (inset) for V-groove (V), parabolic (P) and compound parabolic (CP) reactor congurations (without TiO2 rods). To avoid confusion, representative error bars are displayed on only one plot in each graph. (b) Data shown as survival of E. coli (log(CFU/ml)) against cumulative solar UV radiation per litre for V-groove (V), parabolic (P) and compound parabolic (CP) reactor congurations (without TiO2 rods).

results conform with reector theory whereby the compound parabolic prole was expected to give a better sunlight capture (direct and diuse) than the parabolic prole which in turn should have given a better result than a V-groove prole. The CP reactor results also compares favourably to the results reported in other continuous ow reactors studies (see Section 1) giving an equivalent reaction rate constant of 1.3 W h/m2 compared to 0.36 W h/m2 (Acra et al., 1989) and 0.66 W h/ m2 (Vidal and Diaz, 2000). 3.2. Solar photocatalytic disinfection The next set of trials aimed to assess whether any enhancement could be made to the process by inducing

a photocatalytic eect using the TiO2 covered rods. As in the previous set of trials, the results presented were calculated as an average value of the three repeat experiments per reactor. Fig. 3(a) and (b) are shown as plots of bacterial survival as a function of time and cumulative solar UV dose. A 34-log reduction in E. coli was achieved again in all tests within the 60 min experiment duration. Fig. 3(a) indicates that, as in the rst set of trials there appeared to be little dierences in the inactivation rates between the V and P reactors, with disinfection in the CP reactor occurring at a slightly faster rate. When the eect of different experimental solar UV radiation intensities is taken into account and the results are plotted as survival against cumulative UV radiation dose (see Fig. 3(b)),

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CP

log (CFU/ml)

5 4 3 2 1 0 0 10 20 30 40 CP (R 2 =0.96 ) V (R 2 =0.98 )

P (R =0.92 )
2

50

60

(a)
8 7 6

Time (mins)

CP

P (R 2 =0.92 )

log (CFU/ml)

5 4 3 2 1 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

V (R 2 =0.98 )

CP (R 2 =0.96 )

(b)

Q (kJUV /litre)

Fig. 3. Data shown as inactivation of E. coli (log(CFU/ml)) against: (a) experimental time and for V-groove (V), parabolic (P) and compound parabolic (CP) reactor congurations with xed TiO2 rods. (b) Data shown as inactivation of E. coli (log(CFU/ml)) against cumulative solar UV radiation per litre for V-groove (V), parabolic (P) and compound parabolic (CP) reactor congurations with xed TiO2 rods.

these trends are rearmed from the linear regression lines, with the CP, P and V reactors achieving 1-log removal with 1.4, 2.4 and 2.2 kJUV/l, respectively. Again the linear regression lines give a reasonable t to the data with R2 values of 0.98, 0.92 and 0.96 for the V, P and CP reactors. It should be noted that the goodness of t for the P reactor was particularly aected by one extreme experimental result at 40 min which could have been due to analytical error. The corresponding results of bacterial inactivation plotted against t30W, give the theoretical time to achieve complete inactivation of 1 l of water at a starting concentration of 1 106 E. coli CFU/ml at a standard solar UV radiation of 30 W/m2 to be 16.9 min, 27.5 min and

23.3 min for the CP, P and V reactors, respectively. Hence, with xed TiO2 rods, the CP reector promoted a 27% improvement to the process eciency with respect to the V reactor and 38% with respect to the P reactor which unexpectedly performed slightly worst. 3.3. Discussion The main results obtained from the trials are summarised in Table 1 which enable comparisons to be made between the reector types and also the eect of the TiO2 rods on disinfection performance. The inactivation rate constants were calculated according to the standard principles of disinfection kinetics (Eq. (3)) based on the

O.A. McLoughlin et al. / Solar Energy 77 (2004) 657664 Table 1 Summary of results for all experiments, comparing inactivation kinetics for E. coli K-12 Reactor prole V-groove Parabolic Compound Parabolic TiO2 rods p p p Inactivation rate constant [k/min] 0.12 0.14 0.13 0.11 0.17 0.17 t30W inactivation constant [kt30W/min] 0.53 0.59 0.53 0.50 0.68 0.81

663

Dose inactivation constant [kQ] (l/kJUV) 1.05 1.09 1.04 0.96 1.34 1.49

exponential decline of organisms, as described by Chicks Law (Chick, 1908). dN kN ! N t N 0 ekt dt 3

where Nt is the number of viable organisms at time, t; k the inactivation rate constant. The temperature in the reactors increased about 6 C over the course of each trial which typically lasted 1 h and the maximum water temperature never exceeded 38 C. This indicates that any additional disinfection caused by heat can be discounted when comparing trials since previous research has shown that temperature related die-o only starts to have a synergistic eect at minimum levels of around 45 C (Wegelin et al., 1994). The trials reveal a clear advantage using the CP reactor which promoted realistic eciencies of 28% compared to the V and P reactors after the results have been adjusted for uctuations in solar intensities across the dierent trials. This conrms that the compound parabolic prole is the optimum collector prole. The results do not however, demonstrate any advantage of the parabolic prole over the V-groove, as would have been expected. The relative dierence between the compound parabolic reector and other types will need further evaluation in terms of full-scale implementation with respect to ease of fabrication, quantity of reector material required and costs. When TiO2 was added as a xed catalyst, the inactivation rate constants from the trials (where the kinetics have been calculated with respect to dose) demonstrate that there does seem to be evidence of an enhancement of 19% using the compound parabolic reactor, although no such enhancement was measured in the V and P. The optimised eciency of the compound parabolic reector prole, as demonstrated in the solar UV experiments, may have also promoted a slight photocatalytic eect, augmenting the overall disinfection eciency of the system. However, the exact extent of the improvement of photocatalytic improvement in the CP reactor has to be mediated by the lack of response in both the V and P reactors and also experimental errors. The normal sampling and enumeration errors inherent in all microbiological work were muted somewhat as a result of

each trial being repeated three times, but are still significant as can be seen from the error bars on the graphs. A hypothesis to explain the apparent lack of photocatalytic response in either the V or P reactors could be that any augmentation of the disinfection by the photocatalyst is being cancelled out by the shading of the direct UV light by the small 2 mm rod supporting the TiO2. This was not the case for the CP reactor since it is a much more ecient reector particularly with respect to focusing the incident solar radiation behind the rod. Hence, the results do not show a particularly large benet at this scale using xed TiO2 concentrations when taking into account the extra costs of fabrication required for such a continuous ow system. It may be that the concentration of the TiO2 per illuminated litre was not high enough to promote much photocatalytic disinfection with respect to a dominant solar UV disinfection mechanism. It should be noted that the concentration of TiO2 coating used (94 mg/l) is low when compared to typical doses that have been used in other research trials. For example, where TiO2 has been used in a suspended form for detoxication processes, concentrations up to 1000 mg/l are common (Robert and Malato, 2002) and when used for disinfection applications TiO2 suspension concentrations have ranged from 250 to 3000 mg/l (Salih, 2002; Rincon and Pulgarin, 2003). Equally, where researchers have used TiO2 xed to an inert media, concentrations of 2502000 mg/l have been used for disinfection applications (Salih, 2002; Rin con and Pulgarin, 2003). In these cases, however, the attached photocatalyst has been used in batch processes which makes direct comparison with the TiO2 coated rods used in this research dicult since they are located in turbulent ow conditions. Hence, future research should be targeted to nd improved methods of xing higher concentrations of photocatalyst within the tubes of the reactor or alternatively maximising the TiO2 area to liquid volume ratio. 4. Conclusions The general feasibility of solar disinfection using low cost continuous ow reactors has been proved using E. coli K-12 as a model bacterium. The results demonstrate

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O.A. McLoughlin et al. / Solar Energy 77 (2004) 657664 Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico, June 1998, pp. 265275. Cooper, A., Goswami, D.Y., 1998b. Solar photochemical detoxication and disinfection for water treatment in tropical developing countries. J. Adv. Oxid. Technol. 3 (2), 151154. Cooper, A.T., Goswami, D.Y., 1999. Evaluation of Solar Photosensitization of Benzene, Toluene and Escherichia coli with Methylene Blue and Rose Bengal, Renewable and Advanced Energy Systems for the 21st Century. In: Proceedings of the 1999 ASME Conference, Maui, Hawaii, April. Cooper, A.T., Goswami, D.Y., Block, S.S., 1997. Simultaneous Detoxication and Disinfection of Water by Solar Photocatalytic Treatment, Solar Engineering 1997. In: Proceedings of the ASME International Solar Energy Conference, Washington, DC, April. Goswami, D.Y., 1995. Engineering of Solar Photocatalytic Detoxication and Disinfection. In: Karl, W. Boer (Ed.), Advances in Solar Energy, vol. 10. ASES, pp. 165210, September, Chapter 3. Goswami, D.Y., 1997. A review of engineering developments of aqueous phase solar photocatalytic detoxication and disinfection processes. J. Solar Energy Eng. 119 (2), 101107. Konstantinou, I.K., Albanis, T.A., 2003. Photocatalytic transformation of pesticides in aqueous titanium dioxide suspensions using articial and solar light: intermediates and degradation pathways. Appl. Catal. B: Environ. 42, 319335. Malato, S., Blanco, J., Vidal, A., Richter, C., 2002a. Photocatalysis with solar energy at a pilot-plant scale: an overview. Appl. Catal. B: Environ. 37, 115. Malato, S., Blanco, J., Caceres, J., Fernandez-Alba, A.R., Aguera, A., Rodriguez, A., 2002b. Photocatalytic treatment of water-soluble pesticides by photo-fenton and TiO2 using solar energy. Catal. Today 76, 209220. Rincon, A.G., Pulgarin, C., 2003. Photocatalytic inactivation of E. coli: eect of (continuous-intermittent) light intensity and of (suspended-xed) TiO2 concentration. Appl. Catal. B: Environ. 44, 263284. Robert, D., Malato, S., 2002. Solar photocatalysis: a clean process for water detoxication. Sci. Total Environ. 291, 8597. Salih, F.M., 2002. Enhancement of solar inactivation of Escherichia coli by titanium dioxide photocatalytic oxidation. J. Appl. Microbiol. 92 (5), 920926. Sommer, B., Marino, A., Solarte, Y., Salas, M.L., Dierolf, C., Valiente, C., Mora, D., Rechsteiner, R., Setter, P., Wirojanagud, W., Ajarmeh, H., Al-Hassan, A., Wegelin, M., 1997. SODISan emerging water treatment process. J. Water SRT, Aqua 46 (3), 127137. Vidal, A., Diaz, A.I., 2000. High performance, low cost solar collectors for disinfection of contaminated water. Wat. Environ. Res. 72 (3), 271276. Vidal, A., Diaz, A.I, Hraiki, A.E.L., Romero, M., Maguruza, F., Senhaji, F., Gonzalez, J., 1999. Solar photocatalysis for detoxication and disinfection of contaminated water: pilot plant studies. Catal. Today 54, 283290. Wegelin, M., Canonica, S., Mechsner, K., Pesaro, F., Metzler, A., 1994. Solar water disinfection: scope of the process and analysis radiation experiments. J. Water SRT, Aqua 43, 154169.

that adequate inactivation kinetics can be achieved using sunlight alone without the use of a photocatalyst and that continuous ow solar disinfection technology is a viable solution for small-scale water treatment in developing countries. The dierence between using dierent collector proles in continuous ow reactors has also been evaluated, with the compound parabolic prole demonstrating a clear advantage in terms of disinfection eciency over the V-groove and parabolic proles which performed comparably. The technique of using low concentrations of titanium dioxide xed to a rod within the reactors demonstrated a moderate enhancement to overall disinfection performance in the compound parabolic reactor, but no advantage in either the V-groove or parabolic reactors. Finally, it should be appreciated that these results are only looking at a single bacterial species and more work is required to assess the kinetics of both solar UV disinfection and any photocatalytic eects on other strains of bacteria and pathogenic organisms such as protozoa and viruses. Acknowledgments This work was funded by the European Union under the Improving Human Potential 2003 Programme of EU-DGXII (Contract HPRI-CT 1999-00013). W. Gernjak thanks the Austrian Academy of Sciences for obtaining a grant within the DOC programme.

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