Assessing the Feasibility of Recovering Water from Treated Municipal Wastewater

Abstract

The problem of recovering water from treated wastewater may concern an increasing number of countries, especially those with low water resources. After costly treatment processes, water taken from surface and underground intakes is used and then largely discharged to receivers in the form of treated wastewater. Advanced wastewater treatment methods ensure that the treated wastewater is characterized by very low physical and chemical pollution, sometimes better than the water quality in the receiving basin. The research was conducted under a cooperation agreement between Bialystok University of Technology and Bialystok Waterworks Ltd. The recovery of water from wastewater was one of the topics pursued.This paper analyzes the parameters of treated wastewater from the largest municipal wastewater treatment plant in the Podlaskie Province. The analysis of the treated wastewater composition was based on monitoring studies conducted by the company Bialystok Waterworks Ltd. between 2020 and 2023. The analysis concerned the basic parameters of wastewater, namely the content of organic matter and total suspended solids.This was due to the requirements for the recyclability of treated wastewater. Linear modeling was performed to determine if a sufficiently strong correlation was detected;otherwise output distribution characteristics were provided.In all cases, the output concentrations were far below the class A limits for irrigation in the whole research period.