Water. Desalination + reuse
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/513849
RESEARCH May-June 2015 | Desalination & Water Reuse | 29 | Study to match treated wastewater irrigation to specifi c crop needs A multi-discipline group of researchers at the University of California, Riverside and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem have launched an investigation into the use of treated wastewater in agriculture. They aim to produce fi ndings that could form the basis of sound water reuse policies. Associate professor of environmental economics and policy and the project's principal investigator, Kurt Schwabe, said the project will review previous studies of the use of treated wastewater to improve the reliability of local water supplies. The project – Enhanced Resilience of Local Agricultural Water Supplies through Reuse of Municipal and Agricultural Water: A Dynamic Economic Analysis – will study also the impact of treated wastewater on crop yields and evaluate the performance and economics of new technologies for using treated wastewater in agriculture. The project will initially be funded with about US$ 300,000 from the US Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture- Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund partnership with Israel. Israel has been using treated municipal wastewater in agricultural environments for 15 to 20 years. If we want to understand the relationship between treated wastewater and crop yield and possible health issues, this is the place to go. "The long-term goal is to determine the most cost-effective approach to utilizing treated wastewater with an eye toward water supply reliability and maintaining water quality standards," said Schwabe. To gain a "clearer understanding of reuse possibilities and their implications on agency costs" required an interdisciplinary approach he added. His team includes researchers in engineering, economics and soil science. Although many communities and water agencies are contemplating the expansion or introduction of treated wastewater for outdoor uses, "there has been no holistic approach to bringing agriculture into the picture," Schwabe said. Treated wastewater is used on about half of Israel's agricultural land and farmers there are seeing decreasing crop yields and excess concentrations of sodium in fruits and vegetables on fi elds irrigated with wastewater, according to assistant professor of environmental and chemical engineering and co-principal investigator on the project, David Jassby. Jassby's research will focus on tailoring wastewater treatment to provide water for specifi c crops. "Our hope is that wastewater utilities can engineer their treatment trains to meet the demands of farmers so we can better reuse wastewater in a way that is cost-effective, rather than send it to the ocean. To the best of our knowledge, no one is looking at this kind of model," Jassby said. US and Indian researchers win prize for low-cost desalination system A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and India's Jain Irrigations has won fi rst prize in a US government contest to develop an inexpensive way to desalinate water in developing countries. A system developed by assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, Amos Winter, and doctoral student Natasha Wright prevailed over four rival offerings in the contest, which was sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Bureau of Reclamation and held at a research facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The MIT team will receive a US$ 160,000 reward for developing the system. The MIT/Jain system was based on the Wastewater to lead membrane chemicals growth Growth in the US$ 1 billion global membrane chemical market to 2020 will be led by the wastewater sector according to a report by market analyst, Future Market Insights (FMI). Desalination was expected to show the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in membrane chemicals between 2014 and 2020 at 11.4%. The market for biocides in membrane separation was expected to double its revenue by 2020 with a CAGR of 12.2% over the period. A CAGR of 8.1% in membrane chemicals overall during the forecast period will be fi red by municipal and industrial demand and tempered by patent and regulatory hurdles according to FMI's report. electro-dialysis-reversal principle, which exploits the electrical charge present in dissolved salt particles to pull them with an opposite charge. The power for the system comes courtesy of batteries charged from solar panels. A University of Texas at El Paso team won the second place prize of US$ 40,000. A group of researchers from Nepal, Jordan, Israel, Brazil, and the US received an honorable mention. The three teams will be eligible to share in an additional US$ 400,000 in grants to set up pilot projects to test their systems under real- world conditions. The MIT–Jain system will now be put to test outdoors where farmers will be using the system daily. The site would be in USAID's area of activity.