parasites are present in the water, then the transparent jerrycan is able to reduce their active concentration to a level that is considered safe by WHO standards.”
Multifunctional Reactor operated by project partner AQUASOIL in the tertiary wastewater treatment facility of Fasano (Italy)
Transparent jerrycan
New technologies for safer water Around 2.1 billion people across the world lack access to safe water, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the problem is particularly acute in India. The PANIWATER project is developing new technologies to remove dangerous contaminants from both wastewater and drinking water, as Dr Fabio Ugolini explains. A significant proportion of the Indian population still lacks access to safe drinking water, while potentially hazardous contaminants are present in wastewater effluents across the world, representing a major threat to public health. Researchers in the PANIWATER project, an initiative bringing together partners from across Europe and India, are working to develop technologies to remove these contaminants from both drinking water and wastewater in periurban and rural areas across India. “There are six technologies under development in the project. Three are for the treatment of wastewater, and three are for the treatment of drinking water,” says Dr Fabio Ugolini, a project manager at Innova, one of the partners in the PANIWATER consortium. These technologies are all designed to remove contaminants from water, with five of the six using advanced oxidation processes in their function. “With advanced oxidation processes chemical or physical agents are used to generate hydroxyl radical species. These hydroxyl radical species are very powerful oxidants, and they can destroy contaminants,” he explains. 32
Contaminants of emerging concern These technologies are designed to remove both known contaminants and contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) from wastewater and drinking water, such as certain pharmaceuticals, hormones and antibiotic resistant bacteria and genes. These CECs have typically not yet been included in water quality guidelines, as their impact on health and the environment is not fully understood, yet Dr Ugolini says that ideally they should not be present in water. “Under the precautionary principle, as we don’t know exactly how they may affect health, these CECs should not be in water,” he outlines. These CECs are mostly the result of human activities and are typically present in trace amounts in drinking water, or in water discharged into the environment following primary and secondary treatment. “In primary wastewater treatment, all the solids from the water are removed. Then in secondary treatment, most dissolved contaminants are broken down,” he says. “At this level wastewater is generally considered
to be legally safe for discharge into groundwater or to be used for irrigation, but an extra step can be added, which is tertiary treatment.” This is what the wastewater technologies under development in the project are designed for, with researchers using advanced oxidation processes to eliminate trace amounts of different contaminants. The three drinking water technologies work on a different basis. “They work on raw water – essentially rainwater, ground water or surface water – which comes from an unimproved source prone to contamination,” explains Dr Ugolini. An unimproved source doesn’t have any sort of protection in place, which can leave the water vulnerable to contamination, an issue that the drinking water technologies are designed to address. “These technologies are focused specifically on the removal of biological contamination, which is an issue that can cause a lot of trouble in low-income countries,” he continues. “The transparent jerrycan being developed in the project removes only biological contaminants. If bacteria and
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The transparent jerrycan uses sunlight to disinfect water, making it safe to drink. Jerrycans are commonly used by people across India to transfer their stored water, which is one of the reasons why Dr Ugolini and his colleagues in the project identified this as an important area of research. “We decided to go with a solution that people are familiar with, but we have engineered it in such a way that we can exploit solar disinfection,” he outlines. The transparent jerrycan is intended for use at the community level, and he says a lot of effort is being devoted to encouraging people to use it. “You need to work with the communities first, to explain why they need to change the way that they’ve been using or accessing their water, and you have to gain their trust. You have to essentially trigger a behavioural change,” he continues. “We work with organisations in India that are already present in rural communities through other development or education projects, so that they can first of all recruit the participants.”
Researchers Bhairavi Sawant (Royal College of Surgeons In Ireland, Dublin, Ireland) and Umakant Tripathi (TARAgram, Orchha, Bundelkhand, India) collecting water samples from the village of Bagan and performing on site water quality analysis.
Wastewater treatment A further strand of the project centres around developing wastewater treatment technologies, where cost and efficacy are generally the most prominent considerations in deciding whether to adopt the technology. One technology under development is a multi-functional reactor, which is designed to work in combination with both centralised and de-centralised wastewater treatment plants. “These reactors can be applied to essentially any wastewater treatment plant facility,” says Dr Ugolini. These reactors can be added to the wastewater treatment train to improve the quality of water before it is discharged; the technology has already been validated in Italy, and he says its effectiveness will be assessed in field trials in India. “The scientific parameter is essentially water quality measurements after treatment in real conditions. We want to check the output of the technologies and the quality of the water that comes out – does this meet WHO standards for wastewater discharge and reuse?” he outlines. “If we are able to reduce the levels of any contaminant below what is expected, then it’s considered a success.” There are no clear guidelines for what are considered to be safe levels of CECs, so the
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Raw water from an unprotected source collected by a woman in Bundelkhand.
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