(100a) Monitoring and Classification System for Water Recycling

Minimizing water consumption and disposal has huge benefits in terms of safety and cost savings. However, to maximize the amount of water that is recycled at a site generating multiple complex waste streams, an intelligent water monitoring system is needed to ensure that water from various sources is processed appropriately. Mainstream Engineering has developed a chemometric water monitoring system (CWMS) to fully characterize water prior to recycle or disposal. This technology relies on statistical methods that relate data to properties of interest. Specifically, we used a combination of several rapid, reagentless sensors to characterize the water according to several classes.

We demonstrated the CWMS for a variety of wastewater sources including laundry, kitchen, and latrine. We then validated our models with additional samples from other water sources such as wastewater treatment facilities to demonstrate the robustness of the system. After specifying all of the components, we designed a prototype system. Principal component analysis was used to classify water and draw distinctions between surface non-potable water, greywater and blackwater. We were also able to eliminate the need for dedicated COD, BOD₅, turbidity and chlorine sensors by processing spectroscopic data with chemometrics.