To exhibit their technology, Epic Cleantec, a water recycling company, even brewed a beer called Epic OneWater Brew from purified gray water from a 40-story San Francisco apartment constructing.
With mega drought and water crisis within the Colorado, Rio Grande and other Western rivers, “extreme decentralization” is reaching other places within the American West, including Colorado, Texas and Washington state. Decentralized projects are being implemented in Japan, India and Australia. Fresh water supplies are under severe pressure all over the world, and climate change is exacerbating shortages. recent test found that greater than half of the world’s lakes have lost significant amounts of water within the last 30 years. The UN estimates that by 2050, 5 billion people may suffer from water scarcity.
“This is the long run of water for everybody,” said Newsha Ajami, director of urban water policy at Stanford’s Water within the West program for decentralized water systems and recycling. “It’s a slow process, but ultimately – given all of the scarcity – many communities will select this as a method of economic development while ensuring water security.”
San Francisco’s recycling systems are usually not water neutral. The largest constructing with the system on site is the Salesforce Tower, a 61-story office, hotel and residential tower that opened in 2018 and is the tallest constructing in San Francisco. Built by Australian company Aquacell, the system treats 30,000 gallons of wastewater, sinks, showers and other wastewater day by day and uses it for irrigation and bathroom flushing, saving an estimated 7.8 million gallons of water a 12 months. That’s corresponding to the annual consumption of 16,000 San Franciscans, the corporate says. Outside water remains to be needed for drinking purposes. (In New York, the Domino Sugar Refinery redevelopment projectcurrently being built on the Brooklyn waterfront, it can process 400,000 gallons of black water per day).
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, a water supplier, estimates that there are a complete of 48 reuse systems in operation in town, with 29 more projects planned in town. The agency says its on-site water reuse program will save 1.3 million gallons of drinking water every day by 2040.
The technology to capture and treat all water to drinking water already exists. But the security of direct reuse of recycled wastewater remains to be being investigated, and US regulations don’t allow it thus far. Experts say a totally circular system, where water is reused on site for each potable and non-potable purposes, will likely be not less than 5 to 10 years away within the country.
By contrast, centralized recycled water systems have been used for a long time, although they too have rapidly developed as an answer to water shortages. For example, Orange County, California is home to the world’s largest water recycling facility. It cleans 130 million gallons of black water a day in a process called indirect drinking water reuse. Highly treated wastewater that will normally be discharged into the ocean undergoes a complicated three-step treatment process that features microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet light and hydrogen peroxide disinfection. The spillage is pumped into nearby groundwater for pumping and treatment to drinking water levels by local utilities.
