AWWA Water Science Author Spotlight

Abstract

Having recently published an article in AWWA Water Science, Megan Plumlee answered questions from the publication's editor-in-chief, Kenneth L. Mercer, about the research. Real-Time Reverse Osmosis Monitoring for Antiscalant Dose Selection in Advanced Treatment of Wastewater Anditya Rahardianto, Han Gu, Bilal M. Khan, and Megan H. Plumlee Megan Plumlee visits Huntington State Beach in Southern California. Right now our team at the Orange County Water District (OCWD) is especially focused on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), such as exploring novel treatment methods for removing PFAS from drinking water. We're also studying ways to demonstrate, and therefore get appropriate credit for, enteric virus removal during advanced water purification as part of potable reuse of (waste)water. Broadly speaking, we research topics relevant to our organization. OCWD (Fountain Valley, Calif.) manages a groundwater aquifer and employs potable reuse. Megan (front row, at left) is a member of the Research and Development Department at Orange County Water District in Fountain Valley, Calif. Department staff gather at a holiday luncheon in 2019. I remember fondly my undergraduate chemistry professor and advisor, who passed away recently, Jim Currie of Pacific University. He was humble and kind. He pushed me to apply to a lot of really noteworthy and famous universities to pursue my PhD; I don't think I would have reached so high or been so confident on my own. I ended up at Stanford for my master's and PhD degrees. I thank you—and miss you—Professor Currie. Our best work is through collaborations since people always do better in a team with diverse inputs and different drivers. For this project, we wanted to collaborate with the developer (Noria Water Technologies out of University of California, Los Angeles) on their new and improved technology (RO-SpotlightTM) to explore practical applications of a novel sensor in our treatment plant. The overarching goal is to be able to better manage and address the inevitable fouling and scaling of reverse osmosis membranes through better, real-time data. Because people are only human and don't have computer brains (yet), I think our biggest challenge across all of science and engineering is how to better solve problems via systems-level thinking. Since we aren't connected with a hive mind, I suspect that people are inefficiently working on the “same” problems over and over again in different fields or even the same field. What solutions can we environmental engineers or chemists adopt from, say, medicine or materials science or food science? As we strive to make recycling water for potable use more efficient and therefore less expensive, I hope it will open up the feasibility of this water supply for other communities. Especially now with telecommuting every day and having gotten awfully comfortable with it in my armchair, I am trying to avoid being too sedentary. I walk my dogs every day, prepare nearly all my food from scratch (including bread and oat milk), and I literally run up and down the stairs as much as possible as a sorry form of exercise. To learn more about Megan's research, visit the article online at https://doi.org/10.1002/aws2.1196. This article is part of the Topical Collection on Potable Reuse. Visit https://news.awwa.org/reuse-collection to learn more about this collection.