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Transition effects in an unchlorinated drinking water system following the introduction of partial reverse osmosis

Nature Water volume 1, pages 961–970 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

It is an increasingly common practice that drinking water distribution systems (DWDSs) may have to deliver new-quality water after decades of service. However, the so-called transition effects when old DWDSs receive new water remain unclear. In this 2 year longitudinal study, transition effects induced by the introduction of partial reverse osmosis in production were observed as marked increases in particle load, elemental concentrations and biomass. This occurred as soon as new-quality water entered the DWDS, lasted for 1 month and started to disappear from the second month. The peak transition window was around 1 month while the restabilization of microbial ecology and improvements in water quality take much longer—between 1 and 2 years. The number of immigrants from loose deposits and biofilm increased by 17.9% during the transition period but had decreased by 79.0% 2 years later. This study provides valuable insights into the occurrence and potential management strategies of transition effects.

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Fig. 1: Schematic illustration of the study.
Fig. 2: Long-term and daily variations in ∆P/V and P-ATP.
Fig. 3: Changes in particle-associated bacterial communities.
Fig. 4: Bacterial community diversity of biofilm and loose deposits.
Fig. 5: Sources apportioned by results from SourceTracker2.
Fig. 6: Changes in LD- and BF-immigrants selected by NCM.

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Data availability

The sequencing data have been deposited in the NCBI database, with reference code PRJNA967184. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

Code for both SourceTracker2 and NCM are publicly available via QIIME2 and GitHub, contributed to by previously published studies37,39,41.

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Acknowledgements

The study has been financially supported by the National Key R&D programme (no. 2018YFE0204100), National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 52022103 and 51820105011) and the Chinese Scholarship Council (no. 201704910877).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Drinking Water Science and Technology, Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P. R. China

    Lihua Chen & Gang Liu

  2. Sanitary engineering, Department of Water management, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands

    Lihua Chen, Xuan Li, Gertjan Medema & Gang Liu

  3. KWR Water Research Institute, Nieuwegein, the Netherlands

    Gertjan Medema

  4. Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Gertjan Medema

  5. Oasen Water Company, Gouda, the Netherlands

    Walter van der Meer

  6. Science and Technology, University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands

    Walter van der Meer

  7. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Gang Liu

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  1. Lihua Chen
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Contributions

Conceptualization was undertaken by L.C. and G.L. Investigation and data curation were carried out by L.C. and X.L. L.C. and G.L. performed methodology. G.L., G.M. and W.v.d.M. provided support. L.C. and G.L. wrote the original draft. All authors carried out writing review and editing. W.v.d.M. and G.L. secured funding.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gang Liu.

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Nature Water thanks Kejia Zhang, Kara Nelson and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1–3 and Figs. 1–21.

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Supplementary Data 1

Raw data for Supplementary Fig. 1.

Supplementary Data 2

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Supplementary Data 3

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Supplementary Data 4

Raw data for Supplementary Fig. 5.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Raw data for Fig. 1b.

Source Data Fig. 2

Raw data for Fig. 2.

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Chen, L., Li, X., Medema, G. et al. Transition effects in an unchlorinated drinking water system following the introduction of partial reverse osmosis. Nat Water 1, 961–970 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00149-7

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