Characterization of drinking water storage tanks in Portugal

Abstract

Drinking water storage tanks allow to store water in the supply systems and help managing water demand variations. However, the tanks’ configuration and operation modes can also affect the quality of the supplied water. This paper presents a characterization of water storage tanks in Portugal, focusing on the physical and operational characteristics that affect their performance regarding mixing and water renewal. For the first time, water mixing in Portuguese storage tanks was assessed by determining the volume of renewal fractions needed to ensure the mixing of water entering each filling cycle with the existing one. The results show that mixing is guaranteed in about 74% of the circular cells and that the level variation required for this in a filling cycle is, on average, of 51%.

Keywords

• water storage tanks
• mixing time
• turnover volume
• drinking water quality