Development of Quality Assurance System for Small-Scale Production of Bottled Drinking Water
Visith Chavasit, Ornsurang Teerawat, Yutana Norapoompipat and Tipvon Parinyasiri* Author for corresponding; e-mail address: cmjs@cmu.ac.th
Volume: Vol.30 No.3 (DECEMBER 2003)
Research Article
DOI:
Received: 25 March 2003, Revised: -, Accepted: 9 September 2003, Published: -
Citation: Chavasit V., Teerawat O., Norapoompipat Y. and Parinyasiri T., Development of Quality Assurance System for Small-Scale Production of Bottled Drinking Water , Chiang Mai Journal of Science, 2003; 30(3): 141-152.
Abstract
The study was performed at the Pilot Plant for Research, Training, and Production of Bottled Water at Mahidol University, Thailand, in order to identify an appropriate quality assurance system for small-scale producers. Results of the study show that coliform bacteria in water could be destroyed with the free residual chlorine of 0.3-0.5 ppm for > 20 min. The standard for total hardness was set up at < 30 ppm. Softening process could not alter the values of pH and total solids of water (p > 0.05). Backwashing of the medium beds for > 5 min before operation could reduce microbial load by 39-96% however it was not significantly reduced after passing through cartridge and candle filters (p > 0.05). Microbial load in water was found significantly increase after being stagnated in storage tanks and pipe line to fillers for overnight (p < 0.05). The load could be reduced after passing the water through UV light (up to 95%) and flushing the pipe with the UV treated water. Total plate count of water from bottle filler was higher than that from pail filler (p < 0.05).