Empirical model for dissolved oxygen depletion during corrosion of drinking water copper pipes

Predictive models characterizing the evolution and interaction of key parameters of water chemistry are needed to better understand corrosion events in drinking water pipes. We performed experiments with new copper pipes under combinations of pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), temperature, chlorine, and dissolved inorganic carbon. We found that DO consumption during 24 h of stagnation was not limited by diffusion, thus the DO consumption rate in the bulk water could be used to probe the processes occurring at the pipe surface. We propose a quantitative dependency of the DO consumption rate on a rather limited set of physicochemical parameters. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.