Advances in wastewater treatment technology for water reuse

This paper presents wastewater treatment schemes and focusses on recent advances in the use of membrane processes such as ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis to produce effluents suitable for water reuse. Such processes have been marketed recently for wastewater reclamation as a means of sustainable water management worldwide especially in the arid and semi-arid regions. Membrane technology has become a technically and economically feasible option for advanced wastewater treatment. In Kuwait, where natural fresh water resources are scarce, the Sulaibiya Wastewater Treatment and Reclamation Plant (WWT RP) was established with a design capacity of 375,000 m3/d to be the world s largest membrane-based water reclamation facility which uses ultrafiltration (UF) and reverses osmosis (RO) for water reclamation. The UF/RO treatment stage has successfully proven to produce water that exceeds reuse quality requirements. This plant showed high stability and reliability in coping with variations in wastewater characteristics, water temperature and to about 15% increase in inflow over its design capacity. It also achieved up to 99% removal of pollutants along the treatment stages by removing traces of residual pollutants. Also, RO lowered the total dissolved solids of plant effluent considerably and produced effluents satisfying drinking water quality standards.