Online Drinking Water Quality Monitoring: Review on Available and Emerging Technologies

Online drinking water quality monitoring technologies have made significant progress for source water surveillance and water treatment plant operation. The use of these technologies in the distribution system has not been favorable due to the high costs associated with installation, maintenance, and calibration of a large distributed array of monitoring sensors. This has led to a search for newer technologies that can be economically deployed on a large scale. This paper includes a brief description of important parameters for drinking water and current available technologies used in the field. The paper also provides a thorough review of the advances in sensor technology for measurement of common water quality parameters (pH, turbidity, free chlorine, dissolved oxygen, and conductivity) in drinking water distribution systems.