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Statistics of Microbial Disinfection
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Statistics of Microbial Disinfection

Charles N. Haas and Barbara Heller
Water science and technology, v 21(3), pp 197-201
01 Mar 1989

Abstract

Engineering adequate disinfection processes and assessing risks associated with various disinfection options requires knowledge of kinetics of microbial inactivation as a function of design variables (e.g., dose, contact time). Often such information is obtained in batch studies and extrapolated to design conditions. By Monte Carlo techniques, we have shown that the use of a direct maximum likelihood evaluation for two types of data normally encountered, counts (PFU or CFU) and dilution experiments (MPN), leads to estimates of microbial inactivation rate parameters having lower bias and variance than other data reduction normally employed. This paper reviews the methodology of this technique and provides the theory for the computation of confidence limits for parameter estimates, and discusses how the data may be checked for consistency (goodness of fit determination).

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#3 Good Health and Well-Being
#6 Clean Water and Sanitation

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Web of Science research areas
Engineering, Environmental
Environmental Sciences
Water Resources
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