Water reuse in the production of non-reinforced concrete elements: An alternative for decentralized wastewater management

Abstract

Replacement of water by treated wastewater in concrete production, totally or in part, could lead to great water economy. Therefore, this experiment evaluated compressive strength from non-reinforced concrete samples produced with a combination of potable water (PW) and treated domestic wastewater (TW) at four different proportions: 0, 50, 75, and 100% of TW in the mixture. Ten samples were prepared for each proportion and the samples were tested for axial compression on the 28th day after concrete preparation. The data were statistically evaluated to analyze the influence of TW in concrete quality. It was possible to note that there was no significant difference between concretes produced using only PW and those produced with 50 and 75% TW, but when only TW was used, the concrete compressive strength increased on average 17.7%, which indicates the good potential of water reuse in the production of non-reinforced concrete elements.

A Review on the Performance of Concrete Containing Non-Potable Water

“…This was because the treated WW has impurities well below the limits recommended for water used for concreting purposes [44]. Similar results were reported in other five studies [9,15,21,30,33]. Organic matter may negatively influence the strength gain of concrete due to a low pH.…”

“…Compressive strength is one of the most important properties of concrete that is widely used for the design of concrete structures. The effect of treated WW content on the compressive strength of concrete, according to various studies [9,12,13,15,[20][21][22]27,28,30,31,33,[35][36][37][38], is shown in Figure 7. Tay and Yip [19,37] studied the compressive strength of concrete with different contents of treated WW and reported insignificant changes with varying WW percentage.…”

The Potential of BIM in Disseminating Knowledge about Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems: Learning through the Design Process

“…Regarding the search for universal basic sanitation services, the decentralization strategy has proven to be increasingly complementary to the centralization of wastewater treatment, since the substantial capital investment made in the implementation of centralized systems can be reduced, thus increasing the accessibility of wastewater management systems. However, the lack of research activities in developing countries has led to the selection of inappropriate technologies in terms of local climatic and physical conditions, financial and human resources, and social and cultural acceptance [5], thereby harming the environment and failing to take advantage of some other benefits, such as reuse in agriculture [7] and construction [8]. The first challenge in implementing this type of system is choosing the most appropriate wastewater treatment technologies for each situation-a complex task, which involves evaluating many variables simultaneously.…”

Feasibility Evaluation of Wastewater Treatment Plant System: A Case Study of Domestic Wastewater System in Sleman Regency, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

“…The waste from the treated wastewater can also be reused. Producing non-reinforced concrete from treated domestic wastewater can be an alternative of using treated wastewater which was treated by septic tank followed by anaerobic filter and sand filter (Duarte et al, 2019). Full scale decentralized system has been researched in Brazil by de Oliveira Cruz et al (2018) with septic tank and sand filter which were built with precast concrete rings.…”