what are the toughest challenges for waste water treatment?

Question

my son is doing a research on waste water treatment, and what are the biggest challenges to overcome in the next few years.

Answer 1

There are both environmental and human health challenges to this issue. Sadly, a common way to "treat" waste water is to dump it into the ocean, in which case you have engineering concerns with effluent flow, managing microbe blooms, oxygen depletion, and toxics from cleaning chemicals and drugs flushed down the toilet.



Aside from this type of lazy "treatment," the standard today is harsh chemical treatments that serve to kill much of what is in the water, but obviously introduces those chemicals into the environment post-treatment.



There are new approaches which are showing real potential without the negative environmental impacts. In particular, bioremediation can be used to breakdown toxics and heavy metals in contaminated water, while simulatenously dealing with microbes which are dangerous to human health. There are already a number of facilities in operation around the world, but there are a lot of political battles to win because the technology can replace more harmful methods on the large scale. The link below will connect you to one of the companies that is doing this.

Answer 2

The toughest challenge is to meet higher standards for wastewater treatment while maintaining low costs, in a world that has an exponentially growing population.

Answer 3

Money.



Effective treatments are available for all types of wastewater. The problem is that people don't want to spend money treating waste.



Your son can get lots of original quotes by calling state/provincial level government officials.

Answer 4

The highest challenge right now is to get potable water in almost any condition includint those considered as terrorist i mean radioactive or biological polution.

The pace to get water from the sea is very important also.