Enhanced formation of haloacetonitriles during chlorination with bromide: Unveiling the important roles of organic bromamines.

ABSTRACT

The formation of brominated disinfection byproducts (Br-DBPs) is an emerging issue in drinking water disinfection because its toxicity is tens to hundreds of times higher than that of chlorinated analogues and because of the widespread presence of bromide in source water. However, the mechanism and pathways of Br-DBPs formation remain unclear. In this study, we used glycine, alanine, and serine as model precursors and observed that brominated haloacetonitriles (Br-HANs) were more likely to be formed than brominated trihalomethanes. The results showed that there is not only one important way to HAN formation in the presence of bromide. We propose that organic bromamines, similar to organic chloramines, play a significant role in the formation of Br-HANs. Both the experimental and theoretical results confirmed that the decay of organic bromamines was faster than that of organic chloramines, which verified our assumption. The effect of the pH was investigated to further confirm the role of organic bromamines. In addition, we found that the formation of Br-HANs was significantly inhibited when monochloramine was used as a disinfectant, because the formation of organic bromamines was blocked. However, the formation of Br-HANs was promoted during the UV/chlorine process because of the faster decay of organic bromamines under UV photolysis. Overall, our study reveals the formation mechanism of Br-HANs and provides an alternative method to prevent Br-HAN formation.