A Texas State University professor and his students are testing advanced treatment options to produce clean, tasty drinking water from sewage effluent.
SAN MARCOS — Carlos Espindola carefully filled up a plastic cup, watching as clear water reached the brim. He held it at eye level, analyzing the color and clarity under the watchful eye of Keisuke Ikehata, who agreed: It looked good — almost good enough to drink. Espindola was holding a cup full of treated sewage effluent, which was on its way through a lengthy process intended to make it safe, potable drinking water.
San Antonio joins fight against plan to dump wastewater into Helotes Creek The underlying goal is to stop putting treated wastewater into rivers and creeks — a practice that is often controversial in Central Texas — and reuse it instead, which could both cut down on demand for on other sources of drinking water and help keep existing waterways cleaner. “Our process will be hopefully reducing or eliminating the environmental discharge of wastewater,” Ikehata said.
Creating ‘flocculation’: The amazing way wastewater gets cleaned There, the water it goes through a five-step advanced treatment process: ozonation, biological filtration, ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet disinfection. In ozonation, ozone — a reactive gas — is injected into the water, where it reacts with and removes contaminants. The biological carbon filtration process essentially acts like a large Brita filter, removing more organic compounds.
In the Hays County city of Kyle, swift growth stirs up a fight over wastewater That could also help make the entire system more efficient, Ikehata said. While they’re currently using five different processes to treat the wastewater, the monitoring system could allow them to reduce the number of processes needed, making it less expensive and more feasible to implement. “We don’t want to build a system that’s only affordable for rich cities,” he said.
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