Online-monitoring of recycled water quality
On-site water reuse systems can offer flexible solutions to provide water and protect freshwater resources in water-scarce areas. The challenge for such systems is that safety must be ensured at all times. Online sensors and remote monitoring offer an opportunity for management of decentralized water reuse technologies to ensure treatment performance and protect public health. However, sensors that provide direct information on the hygienic water quality and are realistically implementable in small-scale systems do not yet exist. At Eawag/ETHZ, we have developed algorithms that predict the microbial quality of recycled water for on-site water reuse systems based on measurements from simple and commercially available sensors. These algorithms have been developed in the laboratory, and now require validation in real-life applications in target contexts.
As a consequence of severe water shortages due to rapid urbanization, Bangalore (India) has issued a zero-liquid discharge policy, which requires large apartment complexes to treat all wastewater on site and reuse it locally. Today, there are several thousand on-site water reuse systems in the city, however, only limited information on the microbial quality of the treated water is available. We propose to field-test the online monitoring algorithms in two water reuse systems
Project outcomes:
The knowledge generated in this research will be disseminated to several audiences: (1) academics who are increasingly interested in field-based evidence of decentralized water reuse systems, (2) local regulators who will be provided information on how selected systems perform in the field and what parameters are crucial for performance assessment, and (3) building owners and operators, for which online monitoring can be linked to an increase in actual performance as well as an increase in trust by the customers. To reach these different audiences, we will disseminate the study’s results through various complementary channels
