Upgrading Wastewater Treatment Plant to Obtain Drinking Water

Abstract

With a growing population and expansion, societies worldwide brave lack water for drinking supply. Undeveloped sources of water should be specified to diminish such issues. Direct potable reuse is a supply-side procedure that can enhance the sustainability and reliability of water supplies via recuperating potable water from wastewater. This work assesses the perspective of upgrading the wastewater treatment plants to obtain potable water. Treating wastewater at the highest level of purity to guarantee the drinking water supply is the best approach to avoid the pollution expansion from wastewater even if it is partially treated to minimize its toxic impacts and provide water for irrigation and industrial use purposes. Treating wastewater at present in the actual wastewater treatment plants should be urgently upgraded to provide potable water through adding processes steps such as nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, and adsorption on activated carbon. Evidently, there is an additional cost for these sophisticated techniques to pay for the better future of the humankind. Finally, from the authors’ point of view, treating wastewater must be continuously improved by using more and more developed techniques and consuming directly treated wastewater as potable water must be only considered as the final issue in the case of hard shortage situations for security reasons.