WASTEWATER RECYCLING TECHNOLOGY
technologies aren ’ t just improving the quality of recycled water significantly ; they ’ re also doing it at lower costs .
Besides reducing initial setup costs , upcoming wastewater technologies are focusing on lowering their operational costs by lowering their energy consumption .
There ’ s also growing interest in generating electricity from sludge ( waste materials generated during the treatment process ) in order to reduce operational cost further , besides reducing the amount of leftover ( unusable ) sludge byproducts .
Most new and advanced wastewater treatment and recycling technologies are still in their trial phase , and could take another four to five years before they ’ re anywhere close to being commercialized .
Future adoption The adoption of advanced wastewater treatment and recycling technologies is limited to a few countries , principally due to limited government initiatives supporting wastewater treatment and recycling .
While plenty of countries across the world have policies in place that focus on the quality of discharged effluents ( wastewater ) in order to protect the environment , few , if any , have one in place governing the reuse of recycled wastewater .
Adoption of more holistic wastewater treatment policies and technologies is expected to increase significantly in the future , driven by growing environmental awareness , improvement in technologies , as well as policies and regulations focused on wastewater reuse .
An inevitable rise in the demand for potable water as well as dwindling fresh water resources will also spur aggressive adoption of such technologies in the long run . Developing countries are likely to record double-digit growth in the adoption of wastewater treatment technologies over the next five years , driven predominantly by a growing scarcity of fresh water .
With operational costs sufficiently minimized , the commercialization and mass adoption of advanced wastewater treatment technologies such as Bio-electrochemical Systems ( BES ), nanoparticle water filtration systems , and Nanofiltration ( NF ) Hollow Fiber Membrane technology are likely to pick up in the future .
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