(249d) Advanced Wastewater Treatment and Management for Water Circularity, Reuse and Recycling

Water resources cannot, as they have in the past, be forever expanded to accommodate ever-growing consumption. In the last 75 plus years, world population has tripled while per capita consumption has more than doubled, resulting in a 600% increase in total demand. For industrial, municipal, and agricultural water users alike, the growing strain on water resources has been raising costs for freshwater, wastewater treatment, pollution mitigation, and stormwater discharge. Up to now, the conventional approach has focused on complying with regulations and finding specific solutions to specific needs: water for industry, irrigation, human consumption, energy generation (food-energy-water nexus), and ecosystem preservation, without seeing each element as part of a larger system that needs to be managed holistically.

“Water” is the next oil” particularly in developing countries with population increasing! The increasing scarcity of water coupled with escalating cost of fresh water and its treatment has prompted industry and other users to consider water conservation, reuse, and recycling. Incorporating advanced technologies such as membrane bioreactors (MBRs), reverse osmosis, microfiltration, nanofiltration, and so on, would result in reclamation and reuse of water and less environmental damage, but to what degree, and with what trade-offs and the cost per million gallons? We use water to clean everything but how do we clean our water to maintain high water quality standard? To answer these questions, this presentation includes few mini case studies on industrial and municipal wastewater treatment systems with a focus on short-term and/or long-term effects and/or benefits of reusing and recycling waters on economics (life cycle cost, circular economy), energy, public health, environment, and water-ecology.

A few streamlined life cycle assessments (LCA) will be discussed on water reuse/recycling practices in municipality wastewater treatment plants, pulp and paper, food processing, pharmaceuticals, power generating industries, internal water reuse and recycling within industrial parks (wastewater minimization toward zero liquid discharge); combination of drinking-water and wastewater unit processes and treatments to produce usable water from domestic and municipal wastewater sources; high-rate or rapid filtration using granular media; slow sand filtration (appropriate technology for rural communities); ultraviolet vs chlorine disinfection for wastewater reuse, agricultural, land applications and direct groundwater recharge of reclaimed water, and water augmentation to ravines and rivers during summer low flow.

Key References:

Das, T.K. (2003). “Introduction to Life Cycle Assessment as Applied to Water Reclamation and Reuse”, Presented at the Conference - Ecological Engineering for Integrated Water Management: Designing Urban and Industrial Watersheds, Harvard University School of Design, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Oct 30 – Nov 2.

Designing Urban & Industrial Watersheds (ecological-engineering.org)

Das, T.K. (2005). Toward Zero Discharge: Innovative Methodology and Technologies for Process Pollution Prevention, John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ.

Mihelcic, J.R. and Zimmerman, J.B. (2014). Environmental Engineering: Fundamentals, Sustainability, Design, 2 ed., John Wiley and Sons. Hoboken, NJ.

Das, T.K. (2020). Industrial Environmental Management: Engineering, Science and Policy, 1st ed., John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ.