Hospitals contain numerous pathogens and bacteria. To protect ecological environment and human health, disinfection of medical wastewater and urban sewage is of great importance. Chlorine disinfectants have long been the most commonly used option, while reactive oxygen is relatively less applied. However, with increasing inquiries from customers about online reactive oxygen analyzers, we have noticed that reactive oxygen disinfection is gradually adopted by many hospitals.

In addition to chlorine-containing disinfectants, there are several widely used disinfection methods for wastewater, including ultraviolet disinfection, ozone disinfection and reactive oxygen disinfection. Corresponding monitoring of disinfectant residues is also essential, such as total residual chlorine, residual ozone and reactive oxygen monitoring. This document focuses on the study of monitoring operation of reactive oxygen disinfection for medical wastewater.

For reactive oxygen disinfection operation, the representative disinfectant is composed mainly of potassium peroxymonosulfate composite salt. The disinfectant is normally stored in powder form and dosed as aqueous solution, widely applied in disinfection of drinking water and medical wastewater. Current national standards in China do not specify limit values for residual reactive oxygen after disinfection. Practical experience shows that the residual reactive oxygen for wastewater disinfection should generally be maintained above 0.5 mg/L. The ROS900 Reactive Oxygen Water Quality Analyzer can be used to detect residual reactive oxygen after disinfection to guarantee water safety.

This test is not required if reactive oxygen disinfection is not adopted. Besides disinfectant residue, key medical wastewater monitoring parameters also include coliform group, Escherichia coli and total bacterial count to evaluate microbial levels in water. Routine indicator monitoring should also be carried out with adequate attention.