Separating grey- and blackwater in urban water cycles - sensible in the view of misconnections?

Water Sci Technol. 2017 Sep;76(5-6):1132-1139. doi: 10.2166/wst.2017.293.

Abstract

The infrastructure approach SEMIZENTRAL has been developed for fast growing cities, to meet their challenges regarding water supply as well as biowaste and wastewater treatment. The world's first full-scale SEMIZENTRAL Resource Recovery Center (RRC) has been implemented in Qingdao (PR China). Greywater (GW) and blackwater (BW) are collected and treated separately. Measurement of influent concentrations differ significantly from the design values. Thus, the operation strategy for the RRC had to be adapted. Amongst other reasons, the changed influent characteristic was caused by misconnections of GW and BW sewers. Already a misconnection rate of 6-8% requires an extension of the GW treatment process for nitrification/denitrification to fulfill effluent standards. Hence, measures should be taken to avoid or reduce misconnections. Nonetheless, in a semi-centralized scale (>10,000 inhabitants) a 100% avoidance might not be possible. Thus, consequences from misconnections should be considered during the design of source-oriented infrastructure systems.

MeSH terms

  • China
  • Cities
  • Denitrification
  • Nitrification
  • Sanitary Engineering
  • Waste Disposal Facilities
  • Waste Disposal, Fluid / methods*
  • Wastewater / chemistry*
  • Water Pollutants, Chemical / chemistry*
  • Water Supply

Substances

  • Waste Water
  • Water Pollutants, Chemical