Free Chlorine Disinfection of Full-Scale MBR Effluent to Achieve 5-Log Virus Inactivation.

A series of full-scale testing was performed at the City of Lathrop Consolidated Treatment Facility to determine the "concentration times time" (Ct) value for free chlorine disinfection of nitrified membrane bioreactor (MBR) effluent to achieve more than 5-log virus inactivation. The full-scale testing consisted of tracer study, chlorine decay study, and virus seeding study. The virus seeding study was performed at a flow rate of 1 million gal/d (3800 m3/min), which corresponded to a theoretical contact time of 117 minutes in the chlorine contact basin. It was found that Ct values as small as 3 mg·min/L were sufficient to achieve 5-log inactivation of MS2 bacteriophage in this study, which is comparable to the results of previous bench- and pilot-scale free chlorine disinfection studies on nitrified MBR effluent (3 to 40 mg·min/L), as well as those of pilot- and full-scale studies on granular media-filtered nitrified effluent (2 to 22 mg·min/L).