A study for chloroform formation in chlorination of resorcinol

In this study, resorcinol, chosen as a model humic acid, is chlorinated with sodium hypochlorite in aqueous medium. The effects of some factors, such as initial concentrations of resorcinol and chlorine, as well as their ratios, temperature, time and pH on chloroform formation, are investigated and discussed. Correlations with accuracies of ± 10% are obtained to predict the formed chloroform concentration in terms of time, initial total organic carbon (TOC), initial chlorine to initial TOC ratio, reaction temperature and reaction pH. In the chlorination of water containing total organic carbon due to the presence of humic acids at a certain concentration, the necessary optimum chlorination time for each applied chlorine dosage, ensuring the maximum permissible chloroform concentration in the drinking water, can be determined from these correlations.