Experimental evidence for enhanced copper release from domestic copper plumbing under hydrodynamic control

•Tests for different flow conditions to determine effect of flow on copper release.•Abiotic: influence of the flow on the rate of copper release not on total mass.•Biotic: the total mass of Cu released was 10 times higher than abiotic conditions.•Higher flow velocities enhance the presence of larger size copper particles released.

We present experimental results to analyze copper release from biotic and abiotic pipe surfaces and its relation to flow parameters, from Reynolds Number (Re) 1027–11,618.For abiotic and biotic surfaces, increasing the flow velocity affected the time scale of the copper release but not necessarily the net amount of total copper incorporated into the bulk flow.For biotic conditions the total copper concentration in the bulk flow was an order of magnitude higher than for abiotic surfaces (3.65 mg/L vs. 0.32 mg/L). Similarly, higher flow velocities enhance the presence of larger size copper nanoparticles in the bulk flow.