Author(s)

P. Caputi, G. Del Re, R. Volpe, A. Di Donato & A. Petrongolo

Abstract

The Italian \“Ministero dell’Ambiente” (National Environmental Authority) in June 2003 issued the Act n.185/2003, which establishes technical rules and standards for urban wastewater reuse. It indicates three different possible re-uses: irrigation, industrial and civil. In addition it establishes that each regional authority has to individuate the urban wastewater treatment plants whose effluents have to be reused, it has to choose the additional treatments needed to meet the quality standards for water reuse and to indicate, for each treatment plant, the type of reuse. The limit values imposed for the reusable effluent characteristics are very restrictive, especially for suspended solids, microbiological parameters and chloro-organic by products. Due to these restrictions, in order to meet the standard imposed for water re-use, the filtration and disinfection sections of existing urban wastewater treatment plants have to be modified and improved. The stringent limits on microbiological parameters, chlorine residuals and chloro-organic by products does not allow use of chlorine as disinfectant. The alternative disinfection technologies commercially available are based on the use of UV, ozone and microfiltration. In order to evaluate the reliability of different filtration and disinfection processes and of the whole water re-use system (waste water treatment plant and water distribution system) two different urban wastewater treatment plants have been chosen to perform a full scale test for industrial and irrigation water re-use. Different disinfection processes, used alone or in combination, will be tested, and the influence of reused water in agriculture and industry will be monitored and evaluated. Keywords: wastewater treatment, water re-use, water reclamation, water quality, irrigation, tertiary treatments.

Keywords

wastewater treatment, water re-use, water reclamation, water quality, irrigation, tertiary treatments.