Wastewater treatment and reuse has passed through different development stages with time. This study reviews the most essential changes in water reclamation and reuses over millennia, focusing on ...initial approaches in the Hellenic world and discussing the current situation. Based on archeological evidence and time records, the awareness of the Greeks regarding land disposal, irrigation, and water reuse is highlighted. The latter has evolved into a plethora of applications, with Direct Potable Reuse (DPR) representing one of the last modern frontiers. Currently, advances in wastewater treatment and the spreading of wastewater treatment plants producing large amounts of treated effluents increase the potential for water reuse. This is regarded as a critical option for the continuing protection of water resources and human health, while concurrently satisfying water demand, particularly in areas subject to increased water scarcity. The main constraints in the expansion of water reuse practices are discussed, focusing on wastewater treatment efficiency and quality effluent standards issues, as well as on the lack of motivations related to the acceptability of this practice by final users. Against these challenges, the need for a transition from an “issue-by-issue” approach to a broader integrated water management framework is highlighted.
Organic matter (OM) is a ubiquitous constituent of natural waters quantifiable at very low levels using fluorescence spectroscopy. This technique has recognized potential in a range of applications ...where the ability to monitor water quality in real time is desirable, such as in water treatment systems. This study used PARAFAC to characterize a large (n = 1479) and diverse excitation emission matrix (EEM) data set from six recycled water treatment plants in Australia, for which sources of variability included geography, season, treatment processes, pH and fluorometer settings. Five components were identified independently in four or more plants, none of which were generated during the treatment process nor were typically entirely removed. PARAFAC scores could be obtained from EEMs by simple regression. The results have important implications for online monitoring of OM fluorescence in treatment plants, affecting choices regarding experimental design, instrumentation and the optimal wavelengths for tracking fluorescent organic matter through the treatment process. While the multimodel comparisons provide a compelling demonstration of PARAFAC’s ability to distill chemical information from EEMs, deficiencies identified through this process have broad implications for interpreting and reusing (D)OM-PARAFAC models.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
When urban areas expand without concomitant increases in wastewater treatment capacity, vast quantities of wastewater are released to surface waters with little or no treatment. Downstream of many ...urban areas are large areas of irrigated croplands reliant on these same surface water sources. Case studies document the widespread use of untreated wastewater in irrigated agriculture, but due to the practical and political challenges of conducting a true census of this practice, its global extent is not well known except where reuse has been planned. This study used GIS-based modeling methods to develop the first spatially-explicit estimate of the global extent of irrigated croplands influenced by urban wastewater flows, including indirect wastewater use. These croplands were further classified by their likelihood of using poor quality water based on the spatial proximity of croplands to urban areas, urban wastewater return flow ratios, and proportion of wastewater treated. This study found that 65% (35.9 Mha) of downstream irrigated croplands were located in catchments with high levels of dependence on urban wastewater flows. These same catchments were home to 1.37 billion urban residents. Of these croplands, 29.3 Mha were located in countries with low levels of wastewater treatment and home to 885 million urban residents. These figures provide insight into the key role that water reuse plays in meeting the water and food needs of people around the world, and the need to invest in wastewater treatment to protect public health.
Water scarcity is a huge challenge for industrial and urban developments. As such developments are based on a secure water supply, strategies to ensure the required water quantities must be put into ...effect. In this context, sustainability is becoming an increasingly important factor due to the worsening of pollution and climate change. The integrated industrial–urban water‐reuse concept (IU‐WA‐RE) links gray and green infrastructures by providing reuse water for different infrastructural purposes. Municipal and industrial wastewater is treated separately in different water resource recovery facilities. As a baseline the SEMIZENTRAL approach with the Resource and Recovery Center (RRC) and the Industrial Wastewater Management Concept with a focus on Reuse (IW2MC→R) for the industrial wastewater treatment are taken into account. These approaches are new concepts for wastewater treatment “fit for purpose.” IU‐WA‐RE combines the water‐reuse concepts by linking reuse water flows between the urban area and the adjacent industrial park, but focuses not on a production internal water reuse. The concept is designed to offer a holistic strategy to increase the water‐reuse potential and thus the water resources. It offers a solution to cover the lack of water requirements in urban areas. It is therefore possible to drive sustainable urban developments.
Practitioner points
The water‐reuse potential increases enormously by combining industrial and municipal wastewater flows.
Industrial wastewater should be treated “fit for purpose” and applied in the urban area since the municipal wastewater is not sufficient to cover its own water requirements for infrastructural purposes.
Water‐reuse for infrastructural purposes increases water resources.
The application of reuse water drives sustainable urban developments.
The industrial–urban water‐reuse concept provides a solution to drive sustainable developments by the efficient reuse of water for water‐stressed regions. Since the concept combines treated industrial and municipal wastewater flows for the application of different infrastructural purposes, the water‐reuse potential is increased. Discharging the remaining industrial reuse water is essential to cover the required reuse water demand for the reuse application inside the urban area and thus to enable even sustainable urban developments.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Water recycling goes mainstream Harris-Lovett, Sasha
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
01/2024, Volume:
383, Issue:
6678
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Public health and public relations are key to successful potable water reuse programs
No other resource is as necessary for life as water, and providing it universally in a safe, reliable and affordable manner is one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century. Here, we ...consider new opportunities and approaches for the application of nanotechnology to enhance the efficiency and affordability of water treatment and wastewater reuse. Potential development and implementation barriers are discussed along with research needs to overcome them and enhance water security.
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IJS, NUK, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
In this study, the effectiveness of integrating electrocoagulation (EC) and ultrafiltration (UF) membranes for palm oil mill effluent (POME) wastewater treatment was investigated. The impact of ...various parameters on contaminant removal efficiency, including electrode configuration (monopolar and bipolar), number of anodes, agitation rate, and current density, was studied. The findings demonstrated that using bipolar (BP) electrodes in the EC reactor improved coagulation efficiency. However, an increase in agitation rate led to a decrease in removal efficiency. The electrode configuration of 2A-2C–2B achieved high contaminant removal with a lower electrode consumption compared to the 4A-2C and 4A-2C–2B configurations. The removal efficiencies for total dissolved solids (TDS), total suspended solids (TSS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and biological oxygen demand (BOD) were 59.1%, 99.9%, 96.8%, and 96%, respectively. The operating cost for the electrode configuration of 2A-2C–2B was estimated to be 2.71 US$ m−3 at an effluent capacity of 50 m3 d−1 and 20 h d−1 of operating time, while the energy requirement was 6.20 kWh m−3. An increase in operating time from 5 to 24 h d−1 raised the specific operating cost from 2.17 to 2.85 US$ m−3. This study provides valuable insights into optimizing EC and UF processes for POME wastewater treatment, which could have significant implications for sustainable industrial practices.
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•Integration of electrocoagulation (EC) and ultrafiltration (UF) was used for POME treatment.•Influence of electrode configuration and current density on effluent quality studied.•Electrode 2 A-2C–2B achieved high contaminant removal with lower electrode consumption.•TDS, TSS, COD, BOD removed by 59.1%, 99.9%, 96.8%, and 96%, respectively.•Operating cost was 2.71 US$ m−3 at 50 m3 d−1 effluent capacity and energy demand of 6.20 kWh m−3.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
This paper evaluates the metabolism-based performance of a number of centralised and decentralised water reuse strategies and their impact on integrated urban water systems (UWS) based on the nexus ...of water-energy-pollution. The performance assessment is based on a comprehensive and quantitative framework of urban water metabolism developed for integrated UWS over a long-term planning horizon. UWS performance is quantified based on the tracking down of mass balance flows/fluxes of water, energy, materials, costs, pollutants, and other environmental impacts using the WaterMet
2
tool. The assessment framework is defined as a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) within the context of the water-energy-pollution nexus. The strategies comprise six decentralised water reuse configurations (greywater or domestic wastewater) and three centralised ones, all within three proportions of adoption by domestic users (i.e. 20, 50, and 100%). This methodology was demonstrated in the real-world case study of San Francisco del Rincon and Purisima del Rincon cities in Mexico. The results indicate that decentralised water reuse strategies using domestic wastewater can provide the best performance in the UWS with respect to water conservation, green house gas (GHG) emissions, and eutrophication indicators, while energy saving is almost negligible. On the other hand, centralised strategies can achieve the best performance for energy saving among the water reuse strategies. The results also show metabolism performance assessment in a complex system such as integrated UWS can reveal the magnitude of the interactions between the nexus elements (i.e. water, energy, and pollution). In addition, it can also reveal any unexpected influences of these elements that might exist between the UWS components and overall system.
Technological innovation that is incongruous with established social rules and practices is often confronted with strong skepticism and a lack of societal legitimacy. Yet, how the early actors in a ...new technological field create legitimacy for new products is not well researched. This paper addresses this gap by proposing an analytical framework for the early technology legitimation phase that combines recent insights from innovation studies and institutional sociology. Both literatures agree that technology legitimation depends on a complex alignment process in which the technology and its institutional context mutually shape each other. Innovation system studies recently proposed to explore these processes in more detail. So far, this literature has mainly treated legitimacy as an outcome of overall system maturation and has not ventured into assessing legitimation as an active process. The framework we put forward in this paper conceptualizes technology legitimation as being enacted by different actors in a technological innovation system through specific forms of institutional work. This framework is illustrated with a case study on potable water reuse, in this case the injection of treated wastewater into drinking water reservoirs — a technology most consumers confront with revulsion. California is among very few regions worldwide where this technology is becoming common practice. Interviews with 20 key stakeholders and content analysis of 124 newspaper articles reveal how technology proponents worked on legitimizing this controversial technology by engaging in system building and institutional work at various levels. We outline how the legitimation process interrelates with other core development processes of a technological innovation system and discuss how our framework informs recent work in innovation and transition studies.
•Legitimation of radically new technologies is not well explained in the literature.•Institutional work and innovation studies are combined in a new legitimacy framework.•A case study on potable water reuse in California illustrates the framework.•Legitimacy for the innovation resulted from early actors' targeted institutional work.•Embedded agency in embryonic innovation systems explains successful legitimation.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
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