Wastewater Recycling
Turning pollutents into Nutrients




There is a belief held by many sanitary
engineers that “waste is waste”,



This is NOT TRUE !!


However,

The principal defect in conventional

sewage systems is in mixing of the distinct wastewater components requiring different
treatment pathways





The proposed ecological wastewater treatment stresses on the separation of different qualities of wastewater to facilitate their treatment on one hand
and to contribute in restoring of the water cycle and fertility of agricultural lands
on the other hand


stay tuned...

I think this is used widely now and there is a need to recycle especially in the Mediterranean because it is a closed sea.

if they failed in recycling papers and glasses will they succed in recycling waiste water which need more complicated system
i'm talking about the middle east people because it's world wide working well

assuming it's a failure

what's wrong in admiring the theories

Yo Bro
I think recycling waste water is much easier than recycling the papers because it need less expertise and efforts.

It is much simpler than what people think

yes that's why I am able to gather information about it
had it not been that simple I wouldn't have managed to

by the way those info are around 10 years old !!!!!!


but I suppose they are benificial.....................

The problem of the traditional sanitation concept is not a question of centralized or decentralized structure, but rather a question of mixing of different qualities.
Some of the disadvantages of the unified (mixing and diluting) sewerage system listed below are well known, others are rarely adressed:


1. Hygienic problems in receiving waters downstream as a result of combined sewer overflows and non-hygienized WWTP effluents (clorination damages receiving waters, but microfiltration, UV, or ozone can be used to solve the second problem). Severe problems without adequate treatment in low-income countries where even existing plants fail within a couple of years.

2. Feacal wastewater is flushed to receiving waters, from where drinking water for other people is produced. Even with an excellent purification of the wastewater and of the river water trace contaminations of dissolved matter are present in the tap-water. These trace contaminations can be very effective even in extremely low concentrations (e.g. residues of medicines and their metabolites, or hormones from originating from birth control).

3. Nutrient losses even with the best affordable treatment

4. Ignoring responsibility for maintaining fertile topsoil.

5. High energy demand for degradation of the organic wastewater compounds and for nitrification, increasing use of added carbon sources to improve N-removal (e.g. Methanol) on the one hand. On the other hand synthesis of ammonia from air-nitrogen for production of fertilizer is very energy demanding.

6. Mixing of different wastewater qualities including industry often results in a polluted excess-sludge no longer usable as fertilizer.

7. Central sanitation systems may break down completely after catastrophes (e.g. earthquakes, floodings), while decentral or semicentral systems may be affected only locally. A vacuum sewer system can also work during floodings. The disadvantage of decentral systems is vulnerability to disturbances caused by users.

8. The joint presence of sulphur (S) and heavy metals in sewers can lead to a mobilisation of the metals (Beck et al., 1994).

9. The missing recycling of organic matter from biowaste and faece reduce the production of humus, which can counteract the global warming by carbon-storing (Arrhenius, 1992).

10. A high amount of water is necessary to flush human waste (promotes disasters especially in water scarce metropolitan areas).

11. Leaking of the sewerage system causes exfiltration of wastewater into the groundwater or infiltration of groundwater into the sewers. This is a general problem of sewerage systems and can also occur in separate greywater collection systems.

12. High operation and rehabilitation costs for the drainage system and the sewage treatment plant.

13. The WC-S-WWTP system as the one and only technology is inflexible, inappropriate in many cases and makes further development difficult.

14. Little sense of responsibility for the water cycle and the fate of pollutants is developed on the users side due to the invisibility and invulnerability (mainly by dilution) of the wastewater infrastructure in the local environment.

Figure 1: Scheme of linear mass fluxes in the traditional sanitation concept of industrialised countries (FC-S-WWTP concept)



http://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/f1.JPG


TBC................................ ...................

KSA is already doing so

i saw a kind of documentary long time ago about this subject in KSA

The excess usage of fossil resources means theft from our children and delays development of clever technology. Some regions in South-America have lost their soil fertility due to the waste of the natural fertilizers by inappropriate sanitation while farmers are not able to buy expensive (in the local context) mineral fertilizer (NZZ, 1997). A similar reason leads to desertification in the Sahel region in West Africa, too. Former agricultural soil is loosing fertility due to the decrease of organic compounds. Dosage of mineral fertilizers had to be 6 times as much as would be necessary in France. The mineralising soil in the Sahel region just binds phosphorous to iron. Proper management of organic human- and kitchen waste would have avoided this development. (Arrhenius, 1995) The processes could have been easily foreseen as they can now for the rest of the world. Inappropriate waste and wastewater management is followed by starvation at a time when those engineers and politicians responsible will long have turned to soil. They might not rest that quiet after all. Large scale sanitation is a big business conquering the rest of the world. Business likes win-win situations and profits can also be made by appropriate technologies that meet the needs of people that are only becoming visible when it will be too late. Public awareness has a potential for fast and radical changes. Those companies investing into the wrong technology could find themselves in the situation of loosers soon...

TBC...

DIFFERENTIATING SANITATION SYSTEMS - THE BASIC STEP TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT



Source control and reuse of treated waste is the basic prerequisite for sanitation systems that care for the survival of our descendants of the 7th generation. Future sanitation concepts should produce a rich organic fertilizer for agriculture rather than waste. One person can produce as much fertilizer as necessary for the food needed for one person (Niemczynowicz, 1997). However the cycles should not be too short (industrial/energy crops first) and appropriate treatment is necessary. First priority of all possible concepts is the consideration of hygienic aspects - alternative concepts can and should be better solutions in this respect, too.

The type of wastewater and waste management affects soil quality very strongly in the long run. Care for soil quality with source control and reuse of matter that originates from the soil will automatically decrease the accumulation of these substances in the final receiving waters, the oceans. Water saving technologies are necessary in many regions of the world. Once again source control will save water as a very welcome side effect.
When human settlements or single houses are under construction, the installation of new sanitation system can be taken into consideration. As one of many technical solutions separated blackwater can be treated anaerobically in biogas plants. The combination with the digestion of organic household wastes results in a mixture that is suitable for this process. Anaerobic treatment is very advantageous especially for wet biowaste and became more economic in the last years (Stegmann et al., 1997).

Separation of different qualities and their respective appropriate treatment for reuse is common in industry and is fundamental for new concepts (table 1).

http://www.khellan.net/up2/uploads/4d134d40a7.jpg

Sustainable sanitation concepts will mostly have to leave the path of traditional wastewater management. In some cases the conventional system can be further used to treat graywater. The following aspects should be considered:
1. Source separation of blackwater as basic step towards flexibility
2. Adequate treatment and utilisation of the waste and wastewater contents (waste mining)
3. Integration of agriculture as service providers (transport, treatment) and as users of the endproduct
4. Connection to energy concepts, e.g. utilisation of the energy content of blackwater and biowastes, loss of energy by aeration of composting toilets, energy needed for aerobic treatment
5. Evaluation of overall efficiency with tools as LCA (lifecycle assessment), MIPS (material intensity per service unit) or SPI (Sustainability Index)
6. Reutilisation of separated flows or substitution (e.g. rainwater as laundry water, treated water for toilet flushing)
7. Use and integration of existing infrastructure and long-termed planning of conversion
8. Design for flexibility
9. Social impacts, awareness of the public, motivation, good looking components
10. Stable structure for operation and reasonable fees
An idealised scheme of the general mass flows in a possibly sustainable sanitation concept is shown in figure 2.

A separate greywater collection and treatment is performed, the treatment can be done decentral. The treated greywater can have bathing water quality and can be reused, given to surface waters or infiltrated with precaution preferably through soil with plant cover.

Figure 2: Scheme of mass fluxes in a possibly sustainable sanitation concept
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/f2.jpg

Thanks a lot sister. Ma Sha2 Allah a great resource and we ask Allah sub7anahou wa ta3ala to make it in your hasanat and who knows. some people miht benefit of this to build something for muslim communities one day

welcome..

for full text and more details one may refer to the original source :
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/oldenburg.html