Wastewater treatment of the future: Health, water and resource protection

Abstract

The field of supply and disposal in settlement structures is currently undergoing major changes. On the one side, the focus is on the user's supply with energy, water, and food/goods and on the other side it is on the disposal of wastewater and waste. Thereby, disposal includes recycling and disposal processes with respective treatment processes prior to recycling and disposal. In the past, via the construction of sewer systems leading to conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) as end-of-pipe solutions for treating wastewater, fundamental interests of health and water protection have been met. The spread of diseases due to lacking sewers was most widely prevented, at least in the industrial nations. With the growing knowledge that wastewater ingredients, such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, lead to silting, oxygen consumption, and eutrophication of waterbodies, wastewater treatment plants were implemented, thus increasing the quality of waterbodies significantly. However, the question is whether the objectives of sustainable wastewater treatment have been achieved this way. Research results in the fields of health and water protection as well as changes in society's ecological awareness (climate and resource protection)

Towards circular phosphorus: The need of inter- and transdisciplinary research to close the broken cycle

“…The discussions on the subject of "Sourcing P fertilizer" initially covered the substantial progress in the recent years. In municipal wastewater treatment, the "technology readiness level" of many P recovery technologies has increased significantly, so that a large-scale technical realization should soon be possible (Schaum 2018 ). This is mainly due to a perceived need to close the P cycle and to slow down the rapid depletion of mineral phosphorus resources.…”

Wastewater management by citizens: mismatch between legal rules and self-organisation in Oosterwold

“…9. Due to growing environmental concerns (Van der Hoek, de Fooij, and Struker 2016) and increased awareness regarding substances such as pharmaceuticals (Schaum 2018) and micro-plastics in wastewater (Keessen, Van Kogelenberg, and De Graaf 2018), it is expected that the European Water Framework Directive will impose stricter requirements for purifying wastewater in the near future. 10.…”

“…Poor water quality resulted in extremely unhygienic conditions leading to outbreaks of diseases and epidemics (Van den Noort 1990; Obani and Gupta 2016). In the nineteenth century, fundamental experiments were carried out to collect and transport wastewater by wastewater disposal systems; a centralised system of sewers, aimed at draining rainwater and wastewater, was designed (Schaum 2018). Decades later, the harmful environmental impacts of discharged wastewater were very visible, contributing to the eutrophication of rivers, lakes and coastal waters (Van der Hoek, de Fooij, and Struker 2016).…”

Improving Plant Health Through Nutrient Remineralization in Aquaponic Systems

“…A staggering 70% of the global freshwater consumption is currently devoted to agriculture, reaching up to 90% of local supply in some regions ( Meier et al, 2018 ). The need for high nutrient-use efficiency in existing agricultural systems has also risen in importance due to extreme instances of eutrophication from intensive food production as well as potential phosphorus scarcities ( Cordell et al, 2009 ; Metson et al, 2012 ; Steffen et al, 2015 ; Schaum, 2018 ). These challenges have led to the increase of controlled environment agriculture (CEA), a term that covers protected agriculture (e.g., greenhouse, polytunnels, row covers) and technology-integrated crop management systems (e.g., vertical farming, aquaponics) ( Benke and Tomkins, 2017 ; Shamshiri et al, 2018 ; Hickman, 2019 ; Yanes et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Hitherto unexplored in aquaponics production system are the wide range of aerobic and anaerobic nutrient remineralization systems currently used in municipal wastewater treatment plants worldwide, such as enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) ( Yuan et al, 2012 ; Cieślik and Konieczka, 2017 ; Bunce et al, 2018 ). EBPR has been shown to cheaply and efficiently remineralize the diverse substrate compositions typical of municipal waste ( Barnard, 1976 ; Greaves et al, 1999 ; Yuan et al, 2012 ; Cieślik and Konieczka, 2017 ; Schaum, 2018 ; Rahman et al, 2019 ; Takiguchi et al, 2019 ). Typical to EBPR systems is the enrichment of phosphate accumulating organisms (PAO), which play a pivotal role in simultaneous denitrification, carbon catabolism, as well as cyclic phosphorus uptake and release ( Yuan et al, 2012 ; Stokholm-Bjerregaard et al, 2017 ).…”