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This open access book titled 'Technological solutions for water sustainability: Challenges and prospects. Towards a water secure India' Edited by Ligy Philip, Thalappil Pradeep, S. Murty Bhallamudi and published by IWA Publishing provides comprehensive information about water and wastewater management, with a major focus on urban areas of India.
Planning and installation of expensive water infrastructure in India is a challenge because of rapidly expanding urban areas, lack of land availability, changing governance structures and limited availability of finances. While ensuring continuous water supply, large-scale monitoring of water quantity and quality and deployment of easy-to-use and economical technology to ensure safety of water is critical in the years to come in urban areas. Availability of skilled manpower for operations, maintenance are also crucial.
The book provides comprehensive information on water and wastewater management to achieve water circularity in growing urban agglomerations in India and on existing technologies and the need for development of new context driven and region specific technologies for large scale monitoring of water quantity and quality parameters in the country. This book can serve as a valuable resource for all concerned with the changing water situation and with the potential of new technologies for sustainable use of water in the country. The book has five sections with chapters.
More than 50 percent of the world’s population lives under the threat of water-stress conditions and availability of adequate quantity of good quality water suitable for use is decreasing with time thretening health and livelihoods. Thus, water is now an integral focus of several sustainable development goals: SDG-2 (zero hunger); SDG-6 (clean water and sanitation); SDG—11 (sustainable cities and communities); and SDG-12 (responsible consumption and production). In this context, it is critical to examine the present status of water resources in terms of availability and quality.
This section consists of the following chapters:
This chapter provides an overview of the impending water crisis in India and other nations in the Global South, challenges in achieving sustainability in domestic water supply, both in urban and rural areas, and solutions.
This chapter reviews various challenges related to water quality in India and Nepal and solutions to meet the water quality objectives in a sustainable way.
This chapter discusses the role of domestic sewage and industrial effluents in water pollution, challenges encountered in preventing this pollution and regulations and policies related to water management. The importance of effective wastewater reuse practices and zero liquid discharge is illustrated through case studies.
This chapter reviews the current status of urban water infrastructure in India that includes domestic water supply, sewerage and storm water drainage systems and identifies the challenges encountered in developing water-sensitive urban areas and the way forward.
This chapter provides the historical context, the current state and existing challenges at national and subnational levels for governance and identifies the possible pathways to sustainability through introducing the concept and relevance of adaptive governance in an existing peri-urban landscape.
Water sources in India are getting contaminated with a range of pollutants due to natural and anthropogenic activities and many new contaminants are also being detected in various concentrations across different water bodies in different parts of the country. Several conventional methods are available for the treatment of water and wastewater. However, most of these methods are unable to remove the pollutants to the acceptable level and the need to develop new materials and technologies to address these new challenges is critical besides developing news methods to assess the toxicity and environmental impact of the developed materials once they are let into the environment.
This section has five chapters:
Porous organic polymers (POPs) have attracted significant attention in the last few years due to their structural and functional tunability, superior hydrothermal stability, lighter weight, tuneable pore size, and high specific surface area. Thus, POPs have emerged as potential adsorbent materials for efficiently removing contaminants ranging from organic micropollutants to heavy metal ions from water. The chapter reviews the different types of emerging amorphous and crystalline POPs for wastewater treatment and the challenges related to low-cost, large-scale fabrication, and processibility of the materials and their applications for the removal of emerging persistent contaminants from water.
This chapter provides an overview of simple, efficient, and affordable materials and methods and appropriate technologies available that provide promising and scalable solutions for mitigating arsenic and fluoride in water.
Carbon-based materials (CBM) have unique electrical, mechanical, and physicochemical properties, which make them ideal environmental adsorbents, sensors, membranes, and catalysts. This chapter discusses how CBNCs can be used effectively for water purification, especially for the removal of textile dyes, volatile organic substances, toxic metals, oil, and biological contaminants.
Biopolymer-reinforced nanocomposites (BPNCs) are new-generation materials that can be tailored into various forms like nanoparticles, granular materials, hydrogels, membranes, and coated substrates. The chapter provides an insight into the application of BPNCs for removing contaminants in water and wastewater, along with associated challenges and prospects of using BPNCs in the field.
The use of new and improved materials from macro to micro and to nano-range for applications in varied fields has increased exponentially. While nanomaterials have been popular among the scientific community due to their unique properties, their use has raised concerns regarding their potential toxicity on living beings and the environment. The chapter elaborates on how emerging nanomaterials behave in relation to dynamic microenvironments at the nano–bio–eco interface level and how this affects their toxicity, fate, and exposure potential. It also provides a brief account of the exposure pathways and different models used for toxicity assessment/evaluation.
Water resources are dwindling both in terms of quality and quantity and only a fraction of the wastewater generated is getting treated in India. Though many technologies are available for water and wastewater treatment, there is a need to develop more efficient and affordable technologies, to meet the growing demands in developing countries such as India.
The section is made up of seven chapters:
This chapter discusses emerging technologies for drinking water in the form of easily operable devices, such as nanomaterial-incorporated handpumps, desalination devices, and atmospheric water generators to produce sustainable and affordable clean water.
This chapter provides an overview of the possible application of pulse power plasma technology (PPT) for efficient and rapid degradation of a wide range of emerging water pollutants, including dyes, pesticides, toxic solvents, pharmaceuticals etc for disinfection of water and wastewater.
This chapter focuses on the efficiency of constructed wetlands (CWs) in removing pollutants from municipal wastewater, especially emerging contaminants (ECs) in wastewater systems and their fate and removal mechanisms in the CWs. The chapter also provides information on some of the successful practical models for the application of engineered natural treatment systems (ENTS).
This chapter provides a review of the evolution and application of carbon-based materials in water and wastewater treatment. The synthesis, removal mechanisms, and factors affecting purification by carbon filters, along with the challenges and prospects of carbon-based filtration technology are briefly discussed.
The focus in the wastewater management sector has shifted from conventional treatment processes to resource and nutrient recovery approaches in recent years to promote a circular economy. The recovery of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon from wastewater is a sustainable approach to wastewater management and increases ecological and economic sustainability. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of existing conventional technologies used to recover nutrients from different nutrient-rich wastewater generated from domestic, industrial, and agricultural sources from anaerobic digestate.
This chapter discusses a holistic approach to solid waste management by generating value-added materials and their potential application for water pollution abatement. Different classes of waste, including agriculture, industrial, and electronic and their possible activation methods are discussed. The e potential applications of these waste-derived products in different water treatment techniques, such as adsorption, catalysis, and electrochemical application, are also discussed.
This chapter discusses water treatment in the context of India, the necessity and methods for assessing sustainability, as well as some examples of technological assessments for sustainability.
A fundamental requirement of any water supply system, both urban and rural, is to ensure an adequate supply of good quality water. Thus regular monitoring of water quality parameters is essential at various critical points of the water supply system. It is also essential to regularly monitor the quality of the influent and effluent water of any wastewater treatment plant to ensure its proper functioning, protect the receiving water bodies from contamination, and safeguard public health, in case the treated wastewater is recycled and reused. This large-scale and continuous monitoring is possible only by using online sensor-based equipment.
This section is divided into four chapters
One of the basic requirements for any sensor, is that it should be inexpensive and accurate and while various sensing techniques are used currently to monitor contaminants in raw water sources, large scale field use presents a number of challenges such as poor long-term reliability, portability, need for intensive maintenance, and unavailability of skilled personnel. This chapter on Low-cost colourimetric sensors for water quality monitoring includes a focused discussion on sensors for measuring concentrations of eutrophying ions, heavy metals, pathogens, and emerging contaminants.
The chapter discusses the use of conductivity sensors for flow-through applications as well as immersion-type sensors. Non-contact-type conductivity sensors based on inductive techniques and capacitively coupled techniques are included in the discussion. The advantages and limitations of such sensors are discussed.
In many field situations, it may not be possible to determine water composition very precisely. This can be achieved by developing methods that are reagent free, independent of high-end instrumentation, and facilitative of multiplexed detection, based on the identification of hidden signals through a probabilistic/predictive approach. This issue is addressed in the chapter on Multi-analyte assessment of water quality. The chapter discusses the potential of using AI and ML-based grouping techniques for analysis of water data.
This chapter focuses on the importance of water quality monitoring, methods, and sensors that operate on colorimetric, luminescent, and electrochemical principles.
This section focuses on water distribution networks, wastewater collection, and storm drainage networks that form important components of urban water infrastructure. Concerns related to virtual water are also discussed in the section.
The present section comprises five chapters:
This chapter discusses the causes and effects of extreme events in different regions, mitigation strategies needed to be adopted by discussing illustrative cases from India and the Republic of South Korea.
The failure of conventional stormwater drainage networks to effectively tackle urban flooding has given rise to the paradigm of sustainable drainage systems or low-impact development (LID). While LID measures are being implemented routinely in cities in Global North, their implementation is very recent and scanty in India. This chapter presents a review of various LID measures, status of their practice, and implementation challenges faced in India.
The provision of water infrastructure is costly, but important for cities. However, water infrastructure planning, design and operation are challenging because of unpredictable urbanisation, dwindling resources and climate change. This chapter focuses on issues involved in the planning and operation of water distribution and wastewater and stormwater collection systems in rapidly growing cities, especially in the Global South.
The chapter discusses the challenges encountered while implementing new water infrastructure and adopting new technologies for water and wastewater treatment. It also sheds light on infrastructure financing, resources required for implementation, and institutional and policy framework.
This chapter aims to address the concept of virtual water and presents the role of policy intervention in virtual water management. Case studies of countries with successful management of virtual water are discussed and recommendations for efficient virtual water management in the Indian scenario made.
This is an Open Access book distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Individual chapters in the book are also distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.