Early warning system monitors Bratislava’s water supply

Background

Bratislava Water Company (BVS) is responsible for the operation of water and wastewater systems of Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic, supplying safe drinking water to a population of over 600,000.

Drinking water is produced in seven central water treatment facilities from 176 raw (ground)water sources with an overall capacity of over 6 300 l/s. Given the high quality of the raw water for most of the sources the only treatment is chlorination to prevent microbiological growth during distribution. To ensure that a possible contamination of one of the sources does not potentially compromise the overall high water quality, BVS was looking for a system that could monitor the various water sources coupled with a robust event detection system with the ability to send an alarm in case of an event.

s::can’s solution

To be able to measure a wide variety of parameters simultaneously s::can’s submersible UV spectro::lyser™ was installed. The spectro::lyser™ measures the entire absorption spectrum and is used by many drinking water providers all over the world as a key component in their raw water monitoring. The measured parameters include TSS, turbidity, NO3-N, COD, BOD, TOC, DOC, UV254, color, BTX, O3, H2S, AOC, temperature and pressure, depending on the application. The system was installed in combination with a decentralized event detection system based on s::can’s moni::tool, that continuously analyzes four spectral alarm parameters to detect changes resulting from untypical, possibly harmful, water quality events. These parameters are trained through data from the monitoring sites and then respond to deviations from the water quality observed during the training. An on-site evaluation of the s::can event detection system showed that the trained spectral alarm system on the spectro::lyser™ in Bratislava is able to detect contaminations down to 100 μg/L TOC, 25 μg/L carbendazim, 100 μg/L benzene and 50 μg/L Saxitoxin. s::can’s spectro::lyser is a powerful tool for monitoring of drinking water quality, combining a cost-effective monitoring capability with a powerful event detection system.

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