Taylor.Kelley.MMA.Spring2009.EnergyandWater

It is 6 o'clock in the morning and you are getting ready for work. You are taking your shower, going to the bathroom, and you are brushing your teeth. Right there, 10 gallons in the shower, 2 gallons from the faucet, a gallon flushing the toilet. In total, this daily routine spent 13 gallons of water in fewer minutes. Just think about how many people in the world do this everyday, or even several times a day. According to a water usage statistic compiled by the USGS, the United States of America's population is using 402 billion gallons of water PER DAY. Though much of this water is being recycled through sewage treatment and other techniques, large amounts of water are still slipping through the cracks (literally and figuratively). The problem at hand is that people are wasting water at an amazing rate. This is a global issue due to not having an unlimited source of freshwater. Only 2.6% of the worlds water is freshwater, and a large portion of that is located in glaciers. Humans are not the contributors to water related problems. A example is invasive species. In South Africa, after the Europeans colonized they started to get a little homesick. Their solution to this problem was to take a bad of tree seed whereever they went and plant the seeds EVERYWHERE. Tree's, they're good for the environment, right? Not in this case, years later the trees are now full grown and very thirsty and now sucking up most of the accesible groundwater from the locals. In an effort to save their environment, they are now chopping down trees as quickly as they can (environmentalists with chainsaws).
 * PROBLEM AT HAND**

Lack of freshwater is a problem that is not improving, especially with the Earth's population on the rise. Water is the molecule of life, it is absolutely essential to everyday living. Water is not like fossil fuel in terms of just trying to find a alternative to avoid or problem. This is a issue we are stuck with if we cannot find a way to sustain or increase or current water supply. People use water so freely. They do not understand that this is a REAL issue. The average person does not even really think there is much of a problem, he/she turns on the faucet and the faucet runs for as long as he/she wants it to. I asked several people around campus what they would concider to be the most practical solution to this growing problem and 4 out of 5 said "purify the ocean." As magically wonderful as this would be due to the seemingly infinite amount of water in the ocean, but purifyinf the ocean water would be extremely expensive and not very practical. Expenses, which are yet another setback to environmental protection, most people and companies dont care enough about the environment in order to spend the money to make the difference.
 * DRIVING FORCE**

A few examples of current solutions to this issue are wastewater treatment, sewage treatment, reverse osmosis, and awareness. In my opinion, for personal water usage (as highlighted above) the best solution is awareness (not to mention least expensive). As we have already concluded, most Americans do not recognize this issue, therefore they do not attempt to conserve any water. Even if the American population turned off there water for one minute while they brushed their teeth or shaved, we would save well over 300 million gallons daily, and 109.5 billion gallons annually. Commercially, wastewater treatment is the sensible/sustainable solution to the problem. Many companies are in a business that require large amounts of water, such as golf courses, iron and steel mills, laundro-mats, mining and quarries, and the food industry. It seems only right to try to recycle some water for these businesses that use so much water.
 * CURRENT SOLUTIONS**

Wastewater treatment plants are used for removing contaminates in the water through a physical, biological and chemical process. Most of the physical process deals with a strainer that can remove sticks, rocks or any other solid object. This is very important to do at the beginning of the cycle due to the foreign objects being able to destroy the water pumps and other purifiers. Usually, m ost of the debris caught in the filter is thrown into a landfill. The primary treatment is sedimentation, which is still a physical treatment. This is where the sewage goes into larger holding tanks. In the tanks, oils and other contaminates will flow up to the top because they have a higher density and will be scraped out of the tank(LNAPL- Light non-aqueous phase liquid). This stage is used to make the water clean enough to go through a biological stage, which is the secondary treatment. In the second stage, there are organic organisms which eat the food waste, human waste, soaps, and detergents. The most common way of doing this is called the fixed-Film. A Fixed-Film is when there is a trickling filter and a rotating biological contactor that is partly submerged like a water wheel, which filters the water. Lagooning is the next stage, which is when the water is drained into a large man made lake and settles. In the lake there are organisms and invertebrates that eat away at the contaminates. Some of the common organism is Daphnia and Rotifera. A issue with lagooning is eutriphication, the build up of limiting nutrients such as Nitrogen and Phoshorous in the water. This is an issue because the algae will eat the nutrients and eventually become over grown. If they were to over-grow, eventually the food for them will run out and the majority of the algae will die. This is a problem because the decomposition of the algae takes up too much oxygen. This can lead to lack of oxygen for other animals and can off set the entire food chain. For the phosphorus to be removed a special type of bacteria eats it up. These bacteria’s can eat a large amount of phosphorus, in fact about 20% of their weight. The bacteria are then removed to a different process. To remove the nitrogen a different type of bacteria is used and the same process is done. In some area’s like the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, those bacteria’s were killed, this was caused by the chemical stripper used in cadets rooms. After use, the chemicals were poored down the drains into the school sewage system. The bacteria could not withstand the harsh chemicals of the stripper and large amounts were killed.
 * WASTE WATER TREATMENT**

The next process is called disinfection, the main objective of this stage is to disinfect the water by removing all the excess nutrients, this is so there are few nutrients being released to the environment. The most common type of disinfection is using chlorine which is commonly used in swimming pools and wilderness survival to purify water.Chlorine is fairly cheap (as opposed to Idodine) and has a long history of working effectively with treating water. The one disadvantage is that chlorine itself can produce chlorine based organisms that are very bad for the environment. After the process is done the water needs to be dechlorinated which is an expensive addition to the overall cost. Another common water purification technique that does not use chlorine is one that uses of ultraviolet rays. In this technique, the ultraviolet rays alter the organisms making them no longer able to reproduce. This technique is commonly used in the United Kingdom and in Canada. A issue with this technique is the labor required to change out lightbulbs and the use of electricity.



All things concidered, waste water treatment is effective. 73% of the population or 190 million people in the United States rely on the waste treated water and this number is growing. Over one billion gallons on non-potable water are being generated every day in the United States alone. Most of the water for golf courses or cooling water for power plants is from wastewater treatment plants. The biggest problem with treating the water is sludge, removed from the water (nothing is perfect). About 80% of the electricity used in a plant goes into treating this sludge. Also, sludge cannot be dropped into the environment due to health hazards and obvious environmental hazard. There are new hybrid plants being developed, but none of them have been very reliable. With all the machinery used in obtaining hybrid power, most plants tend to break. This is probably related to it not receiving the proper attention, since it hasn’t been out long enough for people to revise and improve the system. The cost of running the plant will decrease, but you have to hire and pay for the parts that break in these newer hybrid plants. In my opinion, to make treatment centers more efficient one would have to begin with developing more efficient ways to get energy to run the plants. One way to cut down on the amount of electricity used, would be to make the plants more effective in the treatment/removal of the sludge. Most plants being made today are being built smaller, which does help with the amount of sludge being produced in one area. The more plants around the more money it will cost for equipment and the energy to run them. It would much more cost efficient to run one large plant instead of eight smaller plants. In a large plant as opposed to several smaller plant, there isn’t the need for as many workers, and the opportunity cost for a larger pump is greater than a smaller pump. In the United States, 3% of the electricity is used to go into waste water treatments. The Nazareth Wastewater Plant in Nazareth, PA consumes a large amount of electricity. For each gallon treated it takes the same amount of kilowatts to run a 23 watt fluorescent light bulb for about 12 minutes. This is a large number when the plant generates about 365 million gallons a year of treated water.