Meta-analysis approach to generalize chlorine decay first-order kinetic model along drinking water distribution networks

In the last decades, research has focused on identifying the most appropriate models to describe the decay of disinfectants in drinking water distribution network (DWDN). Various kinetic models are available, but the most adopted is that of the first-order for its simplicity. However, the application of these kinetic models is not straightforward because the estimated parameters are strictly site-specific. In this work, a meta-analysis approach was used to generalize the estimation of the first-order kinetic coefficients available in literature, disengaging themselves from the site-specific boundary conditions, in order to make possible the application in real DWDN for the prediction of the residual disinfectant based on water characteristics and operating parameters.