18 ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
Wastewater: knowledge, innovation, and research
Focusing on current gaps and barriers, we look at trends in knowledge, research, innovation, capacity building, and wastewater management.
Extracted from United Nations World Water Development Report 2017
Responses to challenges are presented in terms of capacity development, public awareness and improved collaboration, highlighting the potential for improving cost recovery and applying technological responses at appropriate scales.
TRENDS IN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION With innovation and technological development evolving rapidly, there is a growing impetus for a paradigm shift towards wastewater management as part of a circular economy. Rather than thinking of reusing water as a costly add-on to wastewater treatment plants, the concept of converting them into‘ resource recovery factories’ that will use wastewater and sludge as a raw material and recover valuable products for marketing to end users is gaining increasing attention.
The evolution of wastewater management, especially in developed countries, has been tied to fighting epidemics and major technological breakthroughs. The nineteenth century’ s basic activated sludge technologies( treating wastewater using micro-organisms to remove organic matter from sewage) allowed the transition from“ the sanitary dark ages” to“ the age of sanitary enlightenment and industrial revolution”. Technological developments in the late twentieth century focused on nutrient removal— nitrogen and phosphorus— to deal with the widespread problem of eutrophication and reduce environmental impacts of wastewater. Around the turn of the twenty-first century, with ever-increasing wastewater treatment requirements and institutional management capacities, the research and technological focus shifted to advanced processes in order to comply with more stringent regulations and effluent standards.
Future research and innovation trends in the field of wastewater will probably focus on resource recovery to reinvent the economics of the treatment and disposal of wastewater and sludge. Competing demands for water and other natural resources are also driving research and innovations in wastewater technology and management.
The latest major technological innovations in wastewater treatment are mainly aimed at improving treatment efficiencies. While in some parts of the developed world new treatment plants are constructed based on cutting-edge technologies, there is an increasing call for appropriate technologies matching the institutional and resource constraints of low-income countries, such as technologies that can operate with limited external energy needs and lower installation, operation, and maintenance costs than activated sludge systems, while achieving the same performance targets.
June 2018 Volume 24 I Number 4 www. plumbingafrica. co. za