Wastewater valorization for sustainable reuse of water for mitigating the impact of climate change

 

Name: Manuela

Surname: Macrì

Tutor (surname, name): Bonetta Silvia

tutor webpage: https://www.dbios.unito.it/persone/silvia.bonetta

Climate change, human activities and strong urban development affect water availability with many different world areas, including Mediterranean area, afflicted by water shortage.

A promising long-term and sustainable solution to the growing scarcity of water is the reuse of wastewater. Treated wastewaters can have chemical and microbiological characteristics that could be a threat for humans and environment.

The aim of the project is to promote sustainable wastewater reuse, assessing the role of technologies used for treatment on the quality of wastewater produced and characterize critical issues and possible risks related to different wastewater reuse. In order to improve wastewater quality in a reuse perspective, treatment technologies used on real scale plants will be identified and their performance will be evaluated. An integrated monitoring, based on microbiological analysis, will be performed to guarantee pathogens-free wastewater reuse products. In this context, emerging Public Health issue (e.g antibiotic resistance bacteria, antibiotic resistance genes, Legionella pneumophila) will be evaluated with culture and molecular methods. Based on the integrated monitoring, also the use of chemical analysis and toxicological tests, will be proposed.

Finally, results will be interpreted according to a global risk assessment approach in different wastewater reuse perspectives.

In conclusion, results obtained will allow to understand whether the technologies used on a real scale can produce treated wastewater with quality level suitable for possible reuse in agriculture considering that wastewater produced must not present an impact on human health and environment. They will also allow identification of possible indicator parameters that can play a predictive role in the assessment of the risks also in relation to possible reuse not only for agricultural purposes. The approach used and parameters thus identified will also provide useful suggestions for guidelines development for waste management of reuse and methods to be used for proper routine monitoring.