Water & Wastewater Systems

Distilled water is the safest.

Direct use of treated water for drinking- No- Not worth taking any risk.

Better go for irrigation or safe discharge.

The dissolved gases can be detrimental.

It is an interesting fact that many communities are drinking water that for all effects and purposes could be regarded as DPR, except that it has spent an hour or a day or two in a river or creek. There are several instances in Australia for example where treated sewage effluent is disposed of upstream in a river or catchment that communities downstream are using as their source of supply for their water purification systems for potable supply. This applies equally to other places in the world like the Thames River in England and the Rhine River in Europe. Despite the obvious dilution factor in the bigger rivers, it is not uncommon to find a water supply pump less than a mile downstream of an effluent discharge. How is this so different from DPR?

With respect to the previous respondent, the issue of dissolved gas goes away if the water in a DPR scheme is recleaned through a potable water process before potable re-use. It doesn't make any sense at all to me to "throw away" water that is already cleaned way in excess of any water used for potable water supplies. Yes, it must be recleaned to potable standards, but there are considerable energy, infrastructure and evaporation savings to be made by directly utilising the cleaned waste stream rather than pouring it out, then pumping it back in again.

Use a better name. "Cleaned up human wasted water" won't sell in any country except Japan. There are lots of "spring water" in bottle selling very good which is dirtier then wasted water.

Sell it to water treatment plant and not the end users. The end users don't know what they're drinking anyway.

For quick-and-dirty recycling, search for the video of Bear Grylls drinking his own urine.

You may already be drinking the treated wastewater of the next upstream town, and sending your wastewater to the next downstream town. A closed circle with your own treated wastewater is fundamentally the same.

Many rivers are loaded with antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals,which are very hard to separate from the water.This creates resistant bacteria, and unknown effect on aquatic life.The Thames river has high levels of Prozac, which I suppose makes for some really laid-back fish.Instead of fighting, they just jump in the boat.These things and others, like BPA in plastic, which is an Estrogen precursor, PCB's etc. make river water even harder to manage.

It would make more sense to continually re filter and treat the water than to have to start from scratch every time.With proper development and advances in the treatment process, the drugs may be able to be sold back to the pharmaceutical company for recycling also.Most drugs are filtered from the body through the liver and kidneys, which end up as liquid or solid waste.Many of these drugs are unaltered as they pass through the body, but even the metabolites could probably be used in certain steps of re manufacture.It appears to me that the drug companies would have a vested interest in helping with the efforts.And they have some of the best chemists in the world.It may be simple for them that which is not easy for others.

Future archaeologists will easily be able to tell of our presence from the sedimentary levels from the oceans,glaciers, and rivers, and they will probably classify us as us the "Homo Ignoramus" species: "The Ignorant Ones"

Given enough time, the Earth will heal itself, glaciers will scrape the surface clean of all traces of mankind,tectonic plates will recycle the land masses and spew them out as lava and dust, and life will have another chance to evolve.Perhaps really intelligent life next time,that participates with nature and recycles everything; hey, wait a minute.., isn't that what the "dumb animals" do?

The "ick factor" should not be underestimated. The consumers/voters (in America at least) have an exquisite pea-princess sensitivity such that nothing but the very purest water is satisfactory for flushing their toilet, washing their dishes, and watering their lawn, let alone showering or drinking. There are many technical obstacles to DPR, but it's the psychological obstacles that will be crucial. The ick factor is like some pathological version of homeopathy.

Rather than trying to get consumers to change their attitudes, it would probably be better to convince industrial users to use recycled water instead of just dumping their waste in the river or underground and then claiming that because it is diluted by fresh water now it is no longer pollution. Desalination reject brine, for example, is just dumped. Why not crystallize the salt and re-use the water for the largest industrial use, power generation cooling water?

While the psychological factor seems to be the most difficult to overcome to get a DPR project going, some cities are left with few options.

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/15250522/thirsty-texans-turn-to-wastewater-to-ease-drought

There will always be a stigma associated with the words 'drinking' and wastewater, even though ALL water has repeatedly throughout time been wastewater at some point.

The unfortunate trend in bottled water in recent years only adds to this...

Claudius Jaeager

Jaeger Aeration, wastewater aerators