digital-transformation-of-wwtps-en

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Introduction

Recent population growth from 6 billion people in 1999 to 7.7 billion today has brought with it an increase in the demand for water resources and greater amounts of waste that need to be treated. Organizations such as the World Bank, the UN and UNHCR estimate that by 2025, 45% of the world’s population will be living in countries with water scarcity.

As a result, society sees wastewater treatment as a challenge that can bring multiple benefits in environmental, economic, social and health terms.

As the World Bank pointed out in its “From Waste to Resource” report, published in 2020, “wastewater can be treated up to different qualities to satisfy demand from different sectors, including industry and agriculture. It can be processed in ways that support the environment and can even be reused as drinking water.

Wastewater treatment for reuse is one solution to the world’s water scarcity problem, freeing scarce freshwater resources for other uses, or for preservation” (Rodríguez, Serrano, Delgado, & Nolasco, 2020). In fact, some of these benefits are included in the 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals.

More specifically, in point 6, Clean Water and Sanitation, and in its subsections 6.3 and 6.A. The former proposes improving water quality by halving the percentage of untreated wastewater, increasing recycling and reuse, while the latter addresses the need to expand international cooperation to set up wastewater treatment facilities.

Thus, the importance today of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is clear, as complex systems made up of different processes whose objective is to eliminate all or part of the pollution present in water, becoming a valuable asset for sustainability and the circular economy.

When we talk about water pollution, we are referring to wastewater or sewage, which is water whose quality is affected by human activity. This is divided into urban or industrial wastewater, depending on its source. Therefore, the objective of collecting water from a populated area or industrial sector and removing its pollutants is to return this resource to the water cycle, either by discharging it into watercourses or reusing it in activities such as agriculture.

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Taxonomy

• Industrial Wastewater Treatment
• Industrial Water Reuse
• circular economy
• Sustainable Development Goals
• Water and Wastewater
• Water and wastewater treatment