Directions in Water Quality and Treatment. CEE Retreat January 2016

Transcription

1 Directions in Water Quality and Treatment CEE Retreat January 2016

2 What is currently being funded?

3 NSF, CBET, Environmental Engineering

4 Water Research Foundation

5 Water Environment Research Foundation

6 Aging Water and Wastewater Infrastructure

7 Utility of the Future (as told by NACWA,WEF, and WERF)

8 The New Perspective water-food-energy nexus

9 Water-Food-Energy

10 New Directions #1 Water for Cities of the Future

11 Utility of the future

12 Recent EPA Survey, Released 1/13/16 $271 billion within five years Secondary wastewater treatment: $52.4 billion to meet standards. Advanced wastewater treatment: $49.6 billion upgrades for pollutants such as nitrogen, phosphorus, ammonia or metals. Conveyance system repair: $51.2 billion New conveyance systems: $44.5 billion Combined sewer overflow correction: $48 billion Stormwater management programs: $19.2 billion Recycled water distribution: $6.1 billion for conveyance and treatment for reuse.

13 Old Model for Urban Water Water system capacity is designed around maximum flow requirements Fire fighting, flushing of waste, watering lawn Water Quality is controlled by the most stringent health criteria human consumption of potable water The Result: we re flushing our waste with boutique water Would you pay for your dog to eat at Chez Albert every night?

14 New Approach Needed The old centralized model was a great advancement in 1880, but it can t be maintained in today s world What is the old model: Long-distance transmission of water, purify, use, purify again, and discard to rivers and eventually the ocean Problems with the model Energy intensive No need to purify all water to the same degree Pumping and long transmission not always necessary Wasteful of scarce fresh water No reuse Robbing local environment of fresh water resources Unsustainable urban infrastructure We can t afford to continually dig and repair pipes under the streets

15 A Possible Answer Decentralized water systems, including: Local water harvesting Rainwater, fog, stormwater On-site or small cluster treatment Robust & autonomous, scalable processes Locally available materials (developing countries) On-site or small cluster re-use Re-use as grey water Direct potable reuse How to avoid persistent anthropogenic contaminants?

16 Decentralized or Point-of-use Treatment Long the norm for rural communities, can we do this effectively in large cities?

17 Moving to the new model Need for Tailored approaches Cities with well-developed centralized water Transition to hybrid water systems New Cities & Developments Opportunity to design fully decentralized water with direct reuse Examples Singapore NEWater Israel

18 Decentralized or Point-of-use Treatment Distributed Sensing/Data Robust systems, made better by modern computer technology Example: electrochemical catalytic systems Small energy requirements from grid or on-site solar

19 Persistent Anthropogenic Contaminants What are they? In what quantities? At what concentration should we be concerned? What is the long term human or ecological impact? Will they continue to accumulate in water reuse systems or in the environment? Requires advance detection methods

20 New Directions #2 Better integrating Science, Health & Engineering

21 Hypothesis: Ronald Reagan was right! Trees cause cancer Why do we think this could be true?: connect the dots If we understand the full path we can answer: How can it be stopped Will climate change will make it worse Can new technologies will help 21

22 Not just your average Gipper s hypothesis Start Here Addition of chlorine for disinfection O Exposure to drinking water in the home Cl Cl Senescence & release of lignin fragments Dissolution and incorporation into humic substances Intake to drinking water system Formation of O halobenzoquinones Adduct formation with DNA Cancer New Direction: better integration of chemical, biological and health sciences End Here

23 Environmental Exposomes and Bioinformatics Though proposed for human health, the concept is being transferred to ecosystem health Bioinformatics Advances in sequencing technology are rapid My dissertation (6 years ago): 1 community, 96 sequences, 700 bps ~$1000 Now 1 community, 100,000 sequences, bps, ~$150 How can this data be used to diagnose and improve water/wastewater treatment?

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