AIChE
JOURNAL Highlight
Creating Sustainable Water Treatment Systems
O ne of the grand challenges to sustain modern society
is to secure adequate water resources of appropriate
quality for various uses. The social, economic, and envi-
ronmental impacts of past water resources development
projects and the likely prospects of future water scarcity
are driving a shift in how water resources are managed.
Future water resource management will increasingly rely
on technologies that incorporate the principles of sustain-
ability. Inmaculada Ortiz Uribe of the Universidad de
Cantabria in Spain, et al., discuss such approaches in the
October AIChE Journal Perspective article, “Advanced
Technologies for Water Treatment and Reuse.”
The authors discuss the use of membranes, both in
the treatment of wastewater and in providing high-quality
water for different uses; the development of new bio-
logical processes in the treatment of wastewater to allow
self-sufficient running of wastewater treatment plants or
the recovery of value-added products; and the increasing
use of advanced oxidation processes to efficiently oxidize
recalcitrant and harmful constituents that may be present at
very low concentrations.
Membranes will play an increasingly important role for
several water-treatment applications because of their well-
known advantages, such as a small process footprint, high
separation efficiency compared with other technologies,
and easy maintenance, the authors say. Potential membrane
applications include drinking water purification, brackish
and seawater desalination, and wastewater treatment and
reuse. Filtration technologies — low-pressure membranes
(LPMs) and high-pressure membranes (HPMs) — operate
via a difference in hydraulic pressure across the mem-
brane. Water permeation through LPMs and HPMs can
be improved by applying an electric current (i.e., electro-
dialysis) or by facilitating separation through membrane
distillation.
Despite the advantages of membrane technology,
several challenges must be addressed, the authors say. One
challenge is membrane fouling. “Existing membranes for
water treatment, which are typically polymeric in nature,
are still restricted by several challenges, including the trade-
off between permeability and selectivity, and low resistance
to fouling,” they say. “Nanocomposite membranes, a new
class of membranes fabricated by combining polymeric
materials with nanomaterials, are emerging as a promising
solution to these challenges,” they continue.
Another challenge is the sustainable management of
brines produced during reverse osmosis (RO). “Operat-
Copyright © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE)
ing with water recoveries from 35% to 85%, RO plants
generate huge volumes of concentrates containing all the
retained compounds that are commonly discharged to water
bodies and constitute a potentially serious threat to marine
ecosystems,” the authors explain. “Evaporation techniques
have been widely applied for this purpose, and among the
emerging technologies, membrane distillation (alone or
coupled with crystallization), electrodialysis with ionic and
bipolar membranes, and forward osmosis are still promis-
ing technologies for volume reduction.”
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) were originally
conceived to protect natural resources from the negative
impact of the direct discharge of urban (and various indus-
trial) waste­water to water bodies by removing major water
constituents. However, the shift to more sustainable water
management has motivated the development of innovative
technologies to not only remove major constituents from
wastewater, but also to recover energy and valuable prod-
ucts, and to clean the water for further reuse.
Much of that focus is on the development of technolo-
gies for the secondary treatment stage, which typically
relies on biological processes, the most common of which
is activated sludge (AS) to remove organic matter and/or
nutrients. Aerobic granular sludge (AGS) technology, for
example, has similar performance to that of AS systems, but
requires 25% less surface for implantation and 65–75% less
energy. Although the AGS technology has been operated at
full scale, further improvements are needed to reduce the
solid content of the effluent before its discharge to natu-
ral water bodies, as well as to reduce the aeration costs.
Microalgae-based systems are being studied as a way to
minimize the aeration requirements associated with AS.
Other technologies, including hybrid processes that combine
the nitrification stage with anaerobic ammonium oxidation
(anammox), are also under development.
Over the past decade, the impacts of organic micro­
pollutants (OMPs), including pharmaceuticals, personal
care products, and hormones, on surface waters have
generated concern. The main way that OMPs enter the
environment is via WWTPs. Thus, more effective treat-
ment technologies are needed to remove OMPs before the
treated water is discharged. Technologies being evaluated
include advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), which
generate highly reactive radicals, especially hydroxyl
radicals; hybrid processes that integrate membrane units
with different AOPs; and the combination of AOPs with
biological treatment systems. CEP
CEP  October 2015  www.aiche.org/cep  17