Masking Effect of Chlorine on Algae-related Taste and Odor in Drinking Water Supplies

The masking effect of chlorine on algae-related taste and odor(T&O) compounds has long been an important issue for water suppliers. In this study, masking experiments with chlorine were performed on two kinds of treated water and one of raw water. After adding chlorine(0 to 0.8 mg/L) to water samples, odor intensity was evaluated by a newly developed sensory method(2-out-of-5 odor test) for three days along with the measurement of residual chlorine concentration. Even though the relationship between the residual chlorine concentration and odor reported by the sensory analysts was not always coincident, it was proved that residual chlorine more than a certain concentration could completely mask both added geosmin and naturally occurring T&O compounds. For the sand-filtered water spiked with 10 ng/L of geosmin, 0.12-0.18 mg/L of residual chlorine was necessary to achieve complete masking. In the case of GAC-filtered water, 10 ng/L of spiked geosmin was completely masked by 0.15-0.1 mg/L of residual chlorine. Combined ozone and GAC was not enough to treat raw water spiked with 300 ng/L of geosmin. In this experiment, sensory analysts were able to detect earthy or musty odors from the treated water. From a masking experiment with raw water taken from the Daechung Reservoir, it was found that fishy odor was more difficult to mask with chlorine than earthy odor. As the chlorine residual declined, the analysts began to notice the original odor and the fishy odor was noticed earlier than the earthy odor.