Monday, May 6, 2013

support my project on water sanitation. Thank you.

Well, after my 15 years of study, research activity and building of treatment wetlands systems I'm here to ask your collaboration to develope a personal project in low income and developing countries. This regards the development of a treatment wetlands system that can ameliorate the everyday lifestyle of millions of persons and children. 
I think this can be seen as a marketing or humanitarian aid project, but this is it, we really have to improve the daily conditions of a lot of people.

fell free to contact me by mail and thanks for your ideas or relationships you can give me !


(have you personal contact with UNICEF or other world organizations? or NGOs with focus on sanitation?)


http://www.sanitationandwaterforall.org/


"Environmentally and economically sustainable wastewater treatment systems are more attractive as many countries and communities are becoming water scarce, heavily populated and decentralized.
However, since current wastewater treatment systems are too resource and energy intensive to implement and maintain, many rural, decentralized, and impoverished communities cannot afford to treat wastewater for reuse or to meet environmentally sustainable discharge levels. As a result, bacterial, chemical and nutrient contamination of food crops irrigated with untreated wastewaters threaten community health, or disallow water recycling and reuse altogether. Surface and ground waters are contaminated by the discharge of untreated domestic and agricultural wastewaters as well." (source: Thesis of Bronte Marie Roberts - Department of Animal Sciences - Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colorado - Spring, 2011)

According to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP), 37% per cent of the developing world’s population – 2.5 billion people – lack improved sanitation facilities, and over 780 million people still use unsafe drinking water sources. Inadequate access to safe water and sanitation services, coupled with poor hygiene practices, kills and sickens thousands of children every day, and leads to impoverishment and diminished opportunities for thousands more. UNICEF works in more than 90 countries around the world to improve water supplies and sanitation facilities in schools and communities, and to promote safe hygiene practices. We sponsor a wide range of activities and work with many partners, including families, communities, governments and like-minded organizations. In emergencies we provide urgent relief to communities and nations threatened by disrupted water supplies and disease. All UNICEF WASH programmes are designed to contribute to the Millennium Development Goal for water and sanitation: to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe water and basic sanitation. (from http://www.unicef.org/wash/ )

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Bacteria in a wastewater treatment plant. take a look to these pictures

Hi, by this blog I meet a lot of interesting people around the world. Robin is one of this, he is a microbiologist and on his blog he post really good and interesting pictures about the bacteria communities inside the wastewater treatment plants.
When I made conferencies and workshops I receive always few question about the bacterial activity inside the treatment wetlands cells. In the blog of Robin you can see how they are!!! Thanks Robin for you work.

Take a look here:

http://ofbacteriaandmen.blogspot.it


how many habitant equivalent? do your simple calculation for Treatment Wetlands design

to design a TW we can start from the population count. With the number of habitant equivalent we can have the water volume and an extimation of the pollution of the wastewater.
The problem rise we we don't have a single room with 4, 6.. 10 person that live inside...but when we work for cinemas... restaurant..... hotel..... and other places with a lot of persons that can produce water volume?

Don't worry, it is simple.
We can transform the total population number in habitant equivalent and organic loading. Here the way:


For Example:
1) do you have a bar of 50 mq? Your theoretical production is 7,5 cubic meter a day.
2) do you have an office with 10 employees? your production is 0,65 cubic meter a day
3) do you have a cinema with 1500 seats? your production is 15 cubic meter a day.

It is simple but for each example you have to do few considerations:
1) do you have the possibility to measure the water consumption? If yes compare this with the 7,5 cubic meter you have obtained and make the right consideration. Do you organize party with more seats that ususally are on your bar? consider it!.. an so on...
2) do you have shower in this office? consider 90-110 L per uses...
3) your cinema is open only on sunday? or all week long? you have to consider this in order to design the pipe line and the tanks... etc


Something more on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_equivalent