Wastewater Treatment: Perspective and Advancements

Abstract

Water is a basic necessity on which the human life dwells. Water pollution through human activities is making it unfit for its legitimate use. This makes a huge impact on the environment as well as public health bearing considerable economic and social costs. There are numerous ways of water pollution among which the industrial waste and agricultural pollution, e.g. chemical fertilizers and pesticides, are major contributors. The water pollution negatively affects the declining water table and levels in major water bodies. There is a pressing need for efficient as well as cost-effective wastewater treatment strategies and processes to make the clean water available for domestic and industrial use. In this chapter, we are going to discuss about the developments in wastewater treatment like microalgae, membrane-based nanofiltration, and photocatalysis-based treatment of wastewater. The principle, application, and their effectiveness toward remediation of wastewater to meet the reusable water standards will also be addressed. The processes though conventional are emerging as effective ways to industrialize wastewater treatment with certain modifications and combinations in reactors and the material used for treatment. The design of reactors for these wastewater treatment technologies has also been discussed. Wastewater treatment via microalgae bioremediation has proven to be very cost efficient as it generates biomass, which can be further used in different biological processes. Nanofiltration and photocatalysis have the advantage of minimum contamination, and they can be optimized for better removal of pollutants from wastewater. These emerging wastewater treatment technologies can form an outline for development of better processes for wastewater remediation and can play an important role in water conservation through reuse and recycle of treated wastewater.