Chlorination - History

History

In a paper published in 1894, Moritz Traube proposed the addition of chloride of lime (calcium hypochlorite) to water to render it “germ-free.” Two other investigators confirmed Traube’s findings and published their papers in 1895. Three years later, a full-scale test of Traube’s laboratory work was conducted at Maidstone, England. In the midst of a typhoid fever epidemic, Dr. Sims Woodhead applied (on a one-time basis) about 4,200 ppm of chlorine in the form of chloride of lime to a drinking water reservoir and the distribution system.

Two early chlorination episodes in Belgium advanced the science and practicality of water disinfection. In Ostende, disinfection by what was most likely chlorine dioxide took place about 1900 for a short period of time. Middlekerke, Belgium is sometimes referred to as the first continuous application of chlorine in a drinking water supply. Chlorine in the form of a mixture of chloride of lime and chloride of iron was added to a highly colored water supply over the period of 1902 to 1921.

Improper operation of a slow sand filter and a contaminated water supply led to a serious typhoid fever epidemic in Lincoln, England in 1905. Dr. Alexander Cruickshank Houston used chlorination of the water to stem the epidemic. His installation fed a concentrated solution of chloride of lime to the water being treated. The chlorination of the water supply helped stop the epidemic and as a precaution, the chlorination was continued until 1911 when a new water supply was instituted.

In the U.S., the first use of chlorine for continuous disinfection of a drinking water supply took place in 1908 at Boonton Reservoir (on the Rockaway River), which served as the supply for Jersey City, New Jersey. Chlorination was achieved by controlled additions of dilute solutions of chloride of lime (calcium hypochlorite) at doses of 0.2 to 0.35 ppm. The treatment process was conceived by Dr. John L. Leal and the chlorination plant was designed by George Warren Fuller. Over the next few years, chlorine disinfection using chloride of lime was rapidly installed in U.S. drinking water systems.

The technique of purification of drinking water by use of compressed liquefied chlorine gas was developed in 1910 in the U.S. by Major (later Brigadier General) Carl Rogers Darnall (1867–1941), Professor of Chemistry at the Army Medical School. Shortly thereafter, Major (later Colonel) William J. L. Lyster (1869–1947) of the Army Medical Department used a solution of calcium hypochlorite in a linen bag to treat water. For many decades, Lyster's method remained the standard for U.S. ground forces in the field and in camps, implemented in the form of the familiar Lyster Bag (also spelled Lister Bag).

Chlorine gas was first used on a continuing basis to disinfect the water supply at the Belmont filter plant, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania beginning in 1913. Darnall's work and the technological innovations by Dr. George Ornstein and the Wallace & Tiernan Company became the basis for present day systems of chlorination of municipal water supplies. By 1941, disinfection of U.S. drinking water by chlorine gas had largely replaced the use of chloride of lime.