Date of Award:

8-2021

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

Craig Adams

Committee

Craig Adams

Committee

William Doucette

Committee

Charles Miller

Committee

Ryan Dupont

Committee

David Stevens

Abstract

This dissertation contains two different section that pertain to two different subjects.

Section One (Haloamines): Disinfection with ozone and chlorine is critical in protecting the public and animals from pathogens in pools. Disinfection results in in the formation of haloamines from the unintended reactions of human and animal inputs and bromide/chloride with oxidants and disinfectants which cause health problems.

The purpose of this research was to examine the occurrence of haloamines during the chlorination of saltwaters. In this study, the effect of bromide concentration was observed to exert a significant effect on the stability of Haloamines, and with no bromide present, the half-life for Haloamines was on the order of two to six hours.

Section Two (Cyanotoxins): There is an alarming increase in the frequency and magnitude of cyanobacterial blooms worldwide. Cyanobacteria produce a variety of toxins including microcystins and cylindrospermopsin. Microcystins are the most commonly detected cyanotoxins of major health concern in surface and drinking water.

Utilities commonly use enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) to monitor concentration of cyanotoxins within their plants due to the cost effectiveness of ELISA versus LC-MS/MS. ELISA often produces higher indicated concentrations as compared to LC-MS/MS because ELISA measures mixture of microcystins variants in a water sample. However, regulatory authorities need to be convinced that the ELISA results are reliable, even when it disagrees with LC-MS/MS result.

The objective of this work is to assess the difference in apparent removal rates for microcystins based on ELISA analysis versus based on LC-MS/MS analysis. The data demonstartes that ELISA readings averaged greater than LC-MS/MS concentrations for the split samples.

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