By Emily Diekmann, Faculty of Engineering

today

The Colorado River, which provides drinking water to tens of millions of people and irrigates more than five million acres of farmland, has shrunk by a third in recent years. Arizona recently restricted housing construction in the Phoenix area based on predictions that groundwater would not be able to meet the growing demand.

The University of Arizona received $4 million for the first phase of a project to improve water security and water reuse practices in the arid southwestern United States. Phase 2 will award an additional $3 million in funding, and Phase 3 may award an additional $3 million in funding. The university, in collaboration with the University of Southern California and the University of Nevada, which each received similar grants, Drinking Water Reuse Consortium. Funding agencies should: of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center Institute of Construction Engineering.

“We are the leading school conducting research on water reuse in the Southwest, where alternative water sources and access to drinking water are needed,” said the principal investigator of the grant. . Andrea AchriAssociate Professor, University of Arizona chemical and environmental engineering and university researchers Sustainable technology for water and energy, or west, central. “What we want to do is enable self-sufficiency and resilience in the Southwest.”

The consortium brings together experts from various fields to advance water treatment technology, make water reuse systems more efficient, and promote sustainable practices. A University of Arizona team that includes researchers in chemical and environmental engineering Systems and production engineering, environmental scienceand microbiologyfocuses on using automation and decentralization to improve the adoption and adoption of drinking water reuse.

“The water program at the University of Arizona Consistently ranked top in the world “Thanks to the amazing faculty we have working in this important field,” said the University of Arizona president. Robert C. Robbins. “Their expertise will be key to ensuring drinking water for communities in the Southwest as we face reduced water use and historic drought. We are proud of our resourceful and forward-thinking faculty and the WEST Center for building an interdisciplinary team to do this important ‘work. ”

The power of decentralization

Achri believes that decentralized water treatment systems, which manage water at the neighborhood level or, in densely populated areas, at the building level, are the key to enabling water reuse more effectively. Some cities and big companies like Intel are already experimenting with this. Athiri compares it to the growing popularity of solar panels for home use.

“Water is a nuisance, but I think the way we deal with water is the same way we start dealing with other major systems like the power grid,” he said. “If we really want to make water reuse possible, we need to transform the system from a centralized system, as it has been for the last 100 years, to a decentralized autonomous system.”

Saving energy, time and money by keeping water from running back and forth between neighborhoods and treatment plants. Also, people can learn more about their water sources. For example, the housing system contains only residential pollutants, Achri said.

“This will allow us to better understand the contaminants entering our system and adjust our treatment systems to remove them efficiently,” said the project’s co-principal investigators. Kelly Hickenbottom, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Arizona. “We know the quality and quantity of our water resources, which makes our treatment systems more secure and resilient.

Role of automation

Achri said managing water treatment at the neighborhood level needs to be simple yet sophisticated. Not for now. In fact, Achri said much of the software used in water management systems is outdated and essentially none of it operates autonomously.

High-end systems like the one used by Atri and his team at the WEST Center require a team of experts with unique skills in experimentation, programming, coding, and system analysis.

One day, autonomous decentralization may enable in-house water reuse systems in individual homes and apartments. Atiri compares the idea of ​​such an in-house system to a washing machine that can be easily operated by anyone at home without specialized skills.

“No one is an expert in washing machine technology,” he says. “We’re just using it, aren’t we? That’s the level we need to reach in order to have a truly decentralized system.”

Waste streams and workforce

A portion is not recovered when the water is treated for reuse as drinking water. Contaminated water is sent to advanced water treatment systems that provide several barriers to contaminant removal. From the other side comes a stream of high quality drinking water (at most about 80% of the original volume) and a concentrated wastewater stream. Current methods of managing waste streams such as evaporation ponds, brine concentrators and crystallizers can be costly, time consuming and geographically limited.

Hickenbottom focuses on improved methods of waste stream management, including investigating waste treatment feasibility. water circulation. This recycles all elements of water and eliminates waste. Ideally, this means that only one highly treated water stream and solid waste are produced. The researchers are also looking at ways to recover valuable resources from waste streams, such as minerals that can be used in fertilizers and products such as semiconductors.

As they build a new vision for how to manage water in Arizona, team members also want to develop the next generation of the workforce. This means educating researchers who develop new technologies, such as PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. Working with Jeff Prebatt, Deputy Director of the Pima County Regional Wastewater Reclamation Authority, we also plan to train water sector employees to analyze data sets and operate advanced sensors, automation and controls. I’m here.

“Not only are we contributing to the economy of Arizona, we’re pushing the envelope nationally, saying, ‘This is what a water resilient community should be,'” Hickenbottom said. said Mr.