Best Practices Manual for Small Drinking Water Systems

All over the world the presence of arsenic in water sources for human consumption has been raising great concern in terms of public health since many epidemiologic studies confirm the potential carcinogenic effect of arsenic. Because arsenic removal is the most frequent option for safe drinking water, the development of more efficient and sustainable technologies is extremely important. Membrane separation processes are suitable for water treatment because they can provide an absolute barrier for bacteria and viruses, besides removing turbidity and colour. Their application is a promising technology in arsenic removal since it does not require the addition of chemical reagents nor the preliminary oxidation of arsenite required in conventional treatment options. However, since membrane technologies such as reverse osmosis can be a very expensive and unsustainable treatment option for small water supply systems, it becomes crucial that alternative methods are developed. This work presents a few conclusions based on a laboratorial study performed to evaluate the efficiency of arsenic removal using ultrafiltration, microfiltration and solar oxidation processes under different experimental conditions for relevant parameters. The results showed removal efficiencies higher than 90%. Key-words: safe drinking water, arsenic removal, membranes, public health.

Big data analysis for water supply and sanitation is important for ensuring urban viability. Our research is devoted to studying the methodology for analyzing big data of the water supply and sanitation systems. Based on a review of scientific publications and their analysis, a model for analyzing large data was proposed. It comprises information sources, data collection and storage platforms with indication of parameters for the programming model, runtime and storage environment, as well as data analysis and processing.

Surging population, energy demands, and climate change will push us, ever more urgently, to find new approaches to meet growing water demands. Most often, this will involve harvesting lower quality or impaired water supplies (e.g., seawater or brackish groundwater) as a source for drinking water. Recently desalination using membrane-based processes (e.g., reverse osmosis [RO], electrodialysis [ED], and nanofiltration [NF]) has shown promise for providing additional sources of fresh water across the United States. However, the current membrane separation processes are commonly energy intensive and produce large volumes of concentrated brine which poses unique challenges. Particularly in land-locked urban center brine disposal often relyes on surface water discharge or deep-well injection which pose economic and practical difficulties for wide-spread adoption of such technologies. Thus, there is an urgent need for energy-efficient desalination technologies that reduce the amount of concentrate produced, or identify cost-effective solutions for concentrate management.