# Capacity building for the assessment of the occurrence of disinfection by-products in Ghana Ghana Water Resources First Results on DBPs

Isaac Osei Safo, Junias Adusei-Gyamfi, David Azanu, Justine Criquet

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Isaac Osei Safo, Junias Adusei-Gyamfi, David Azanu, Justine Criquet. Capacity building for the assessment of the occurrence of disinfection by-products in Ghana Ghana Water Resources First Results on DBPs. Water Disinfection, Byproducts and Health Gordon Research Conference, Jul 2023, South Hadley, Massachusetts, United States. **hal-05288712**

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Submitted on 29 Sep 2025

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Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
# Capacity building for the assessment of the occurrence of disinfection by-products in Ghana

Isaac Osei Safo¹,², Junias Adusei Gyamfi², David Azanu² and Justine Criquet¹

1 Lille University - CNRS LASIRE, Environmental Physical Chemistry Team, Lille, France
2 Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

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AMBASSADE
DE FRANCE
AU GHANA

Liberté
Égalité
Fronterité

## Ghana Water Resources

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GHANA WATER COMPANY LIMITED

Public water supply :

91 treatment plants

- 49 surface waters

- 35 groundwaters

- 7 conjunctive systems

14 million people/
32 million total
population

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1. Map of Ghana's water resources (Western Africa)</figcaption></figure>

* Many sources of pollution:

- Mining activities

- Sand winning

- Solid/liquid waste disposal

- Algae proliferation

* Difficulty in watershed protection

* Inadequate attention to environmental degradation

* Poor monitoring

* Issues:

- High turbidity: 5 to 55 NTU up to 3000 NTU in illegal mining areas

- Operational cost exponentially increasing

- 4 between 2015-2021

- Money instability (\ 20 to 40% in 1 year)

- Energy crisis

Disinfection by-products existing legislation based on WHO recommendation:

Chloroform < 200 µg/L (WHO 300 µg/L)

Bromoform < 100 µg/L

Dibromochloromethane < 100 µg/L

Bromodichloromethane < 60 µg/L

Chlorite < 700 µg/L

Trichlorophenol < 200 µg/L

Cyanogen Chloride 70 g/L (WHO 80 g/L)

No monitoring

## Project

A 5-day capacity building workshop has been organized at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Nov, 2022, Entitled "Water Quality Analysis and the Detection of Disinfection Byproducts in Water." the workshop had breakout sessions which featured a series of presentations delivered by faculty members of the Department of Environmental Science

* **Public: about 40 people from**

- Staff of Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) from across the nation

- Food and Drugs Authority

- Ghana Standard Authority

- NGOs

- Academia

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* **Content:**

* **Seminars:**

- Plenary sessions on disinfection practices

- Water quality monitoring and statistical tools

- Impact of climate change on water resources

* **Practicals:**

- Chlorine demand and chlorine residual

- 24-h THM formation potential test

- Analysis of THMs by GC-MS

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* **Networking sessions**

The oversubscription by applicants and overwhelming interest from workshop participants corroborated the dearth of expertise of local researchers and technicians in analyzing DBPs

## First Results on DBPs

Water characterization and disinfection by-product formation from the water treatment plant in the capital city Accra

The water treatment plant (coagulation-flocculation-decanitation- sand filtration - final chlorination) ensures a 40% DOC abbatment limited to the removal of the higher masses

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2. Organic matter removal through the drinking water treatment plant of Accra</figcaption></figure>

<table><thead><tr><th>THM4</th><th>(µg/L)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>CHCl<sub>3</sub></td><td>43</td></tr><tr><td>CHBrCl<sub>2</sub></td><td>44</td></tr><tr><td>CHBr<sub>2</sub>Cl</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><td>CHBr<sub>3</sub></td><td>1.9</td></tr><tr><td>Iodinated THMs</td><td>(ng/L)</td></tr><tr><td>CHCl<sub>3</sub>I</td><td>3100</td></tr><tr><td>CHCl<sub>2</sub>I</td><td>110</td></tr><tr><td>CHBrCl<sub>2</sub></td><td>32</td></tr><tr><td>CHBr<sub>2</sub>I</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><td>CHBr<sub>3</sub>I</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>CHI<sub>3</sub></td><td>&lt; 2</td></tr></tbody></table>

* THM4 below the national legislation and WHO recommendation, however close to the European standard (100 µg/L) and higher than the US one (80 µg/L)

* High concentration of iodinated THMs certainly due to the vicinity of ocean and source of iodine

## Future Research

The PhD project of Isaac Osei Safo has been funded by the French Embassy in Ghana and Haust-de-France Council and will start in Fall 2023. The aim will be to make an assessment of some of the biggest drinking treatment plant treating surface waters in Ghana in terms of DBP precursor removal, formation of DBPs and when possible variability over time.

The authors thank The French Embassy in Ghana for the funding through the Nyansapo Project (2022-2023) and the funding of Isaac Osei Safo PhD project with the co-funding of the Hauts-de-France council.

The ANR through the funding of NOMIC (ANR-21-CE04-0003) and ECRIN CPER project are also thanked by J. Criquet for supporting the research on organic matter characterization and disinfection by-product formation in the University of Lille

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AMBASSADE
DE FRANCE
AU GHANA

Ile de France
Fronterité

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Justine Criquet, Associate Professor

justine.criquet@univ-lille.fr | pro.univ-lille.fr/justine-criquet/

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NOMIC
Organic matter
Innovative characterization

anr

agence nationale
de la recherche

ECRIN
Environnement Climat
Recherche & Innovation