The conventional approach to nutrient rich waste waters traditionally has been to spread the waste waters in lagoon type structures or croplands or dump them into receiving waters. These approaches have led to the issues in increasing nutrient (ammonium, phosphate, magnesium ) loads causing eutrophication of surface water bodies and causing destruction of aquatic diversity.

Crystallization via chemical precipitation to recover and reuse such nutrients into especially what is called ‘ struvite ‘ ( a slow releasing fertilizer ) has been the most widely adopted solution  by technology players in this application space. It is widely believed that this approach has multiple benefits by way of reduced sludge loads, revenue generation streams  through struvite by-product sales, protection of aquatic diversity and reduction of carbon footprint.

Wet wastes are said to cause severe environmental disposal problems, add to feedstock costs, increase energy processing costs  and loss of significant opportunities to generate revenues via waste to energy pathway conversions.

Hydrothermal processing helps to convert wet wastes efficiently into biofuels and clean water using no solvents but only pressurized water; solves two challenges at once, reducing disposal problem and generating clean energy profitably. Process is similar to fossil fuel formation, with less energy consumption  but at a much faster rate in a compact, economical manufacturing operation with a wide variety of feed stocks. Bio-crude and methane are the two principal by-products.

12 Principles of Green Chemistry developed by Paul Anastas and John Warner outline key approaches that underlay a green process, chemical or product (Ref : http://bit.ly/2g2xlLq ). These range from use of safe solvents, design for energy efficiency to safer chemistry for accident prevention.

It is widely believed that the application of the principles leads to benefits for human health, environment and economy and business at large in the forms of clean air, water, food, reduced toxic exposures, less chemical destruction of ecosystems, lesser use of landfills, reduced waste, higher product yields and better performance of products among others.

Micropollutants are contaminants (including for example pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), hormones, pesticides and industrial chemicals.) that are persistent and bioactive. This means that they are not completely biodegradable and cannot be removed with conventional wastewater treatment technologies. The continued release of micropollutants with wastewater effluent is believed to cause long-term hazards as the contaminants are bio accumulating and even forming new mixtures in our waters. The exact effects are not fully known(Source: Micropollutants.com).

Among the several available technologies that are proven to work, ozonation (Chemical processes that employ ozone) , packed activated carbon are seen as the techno-economically feasible solutions resulting in up to 80% load reduction of a broad range of micropollutants. Activated carbon is an effective adsorbent with wide environmental applications such as in the treatment of drinking water, wastewater, contaminated soil and groundwater. The use of powdered form of activated carbon has become more preferable since combination of small particle size and longer contact time leads to high surface loading and adsorption sites and to high throughput in micropollutants load removal.

Globally, aging wastewater infrastructures are rapidly deteriorating and sometimes failing — with human, environmental and financial consequences. Deterioration can increase gradually with time, or occur in discrete steps. As this aging process continues, the need for effective asset integrity management becomes more pressing. Maintaining such assets in fit-for-purpose condition throughout their target lifespans is a primary goal for utilities worldwide.

GIS based asset integrity management and capital planning platforms for wastewater infrastructures leverage existing GIS and IT investments with advanced modeling and sophisticated predictive analytics to give utilities a cost effective business intelligence platform for informed, risk based and action-oriented decision making covering application areas in pipe failure/deterioration, valves criticality modeling, scenarios and maintenance planning, capital planning among others.