What does Renewable Water look like?

Renewable Water is about improving the performance and efficiency of the Water Cycle by managing and maintaining quality for maximum reusability.

“Reusable” doesn’t mean a second-class water quality suitable only for watering the garden or washing cars. The objective is to maintain water quality throughout the Water Cycle at a standard good enough to be drawn by a water purification plant to produce potable water.

This means you would see evidence of Renewable Water throughout the Water Cycle.

Municipal Wastewater Treatment

To some extent, limits for contaminants in wastewater treatment discharges are set according to what conventional technology and processes can achieve. The Biotechnology Solution Platform has transformed the discharged treated effluent water from overloaded, non-compliant plants to a standard that could be drawn directly into a conventional water purification plant. This is perhaps the “gold standard” for Renewable Water.

In many situations this turns the principle that “the solution to pollution is dilution” on its head because the discharged effluent is of a better quality than water in downstream eutrophic lakes, dams and reservoirs.

Livestock Manure and Wastewater

Livestock manure is a potentially rich source of nutrients, but those nutrients are not very bioavailable. When manure is sprayed as a fertilizer into fields it needs to decompose for the nutrient bioavailability to improve and this takes time. When it rains, partially decomposed manure is a prime source of nutrient runoff carrying these nutrients in the watershed and into water bodies where they drive eutrophication.

Biotechnology Solutions provide nutrient rich water for irrigation where the nutrients are bioavailable for uptake by crops, improving crop yield and reducing nutrient runoff, and also allow water to be treated to a standard where it can be reused in livestock operations.

Lakes & Dams

Improving wastewater discharge quality reduces nutrient inflow to downstream water bodies. However, eutrophic water bodies have extensive nutrient stockpiles in sediments, which are added to annually when leaves fall into the water and add to decomposing sediments.

By reversing eutrophication, excessive invasive weeds, algae and cyanobacteria are controlled and water quality is maintained.

Reservoirs

By improving the aquatic biome, water quality is improved, reducing the quantity and cost of treatment chemicals, and the potentially harmful by-products of chemical treatment. “Water shortages” due to toxic CyanoHABs preventing water being purified are eliminated too.

Aquaculture & Protein Production

Protein production in the form of meat is very water intensive. The more conservative estimates are that it takes about 4 000 liters of water to produce a kilogram of beef or about 500 gallons to produce a pound. It is for this reason that providing enough meat protein for the global population is seen as a major challenge in the future in the face of the Global Water Crisis.

Aquaculture is far more efficient in terms of water economics as a means of protein production. However, maintaining water quality to maximize yields and minimize mortality rates is a major challenge in intensive aquaculture operations.

Biotechnology Solutions maintain water quality by maintaining dissolved oxygen levels, reducing pathogens and digesting fish excrement sediment facilitating more efficient aquaculture operations and protein production.

These examples all illustrate how managing the dynamics at the WEB Nexus is critical to achieving Renewable Water.

Menu