Topic 6

Second Question

Water Recycling vs Desalination- Which one is the best

choice to achieve sustainability?
Water recycling is the process to neutralize the used water after guiding
it through several steps of treatment procedure. Water recycling requires
a central sewage system connected with a treatment facility. There are
few steps in the treatment process. First step is the primary screening to
remove large particles in water like dead animals, wood particles or
plastic. Second step is to reduce the concentration level of dissolved
substances like organic chemicals and different kind of inorganic salts.
After removing these macro wastes, the third step is to mix chlorine with
this water to neutralize all harmful micro particles and pathogens (Water
for all, 2015). The final step is to stabilize the pH level of the water by
mixing with other water and sodium hydroxide (or lime). This water is
known as grey water which is non potable but can be used for irrigation,
industrial or toilet purposes. The grey water is usually released to river
and lakes from where the water is then transferred to water treatment
plant in order to transfer it to potable water.
The process explained above is known as Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR).
Recently there is another process known as Direct Potable Reuse
(DPR) where the water is directly transferred to the water treatment plant
from wastewater treatment plant. The DPR process require higher level of
treatment and it is the faster way to recycle the water. However there are
some psychological issues with the use of DPR process. People showed
the yack factor when it comes to DPR. On the contrary the social
acceptance of IPR is better due to that environmental buffer used in the
middle.
Now if we compare the water recycling process with the desalination
then we will see that the capital cost is very high for the desalination
process. The comparison of the costs is shown below in table 1. DPR is
cost effective comparing to all the options. From table 2, it can be
concluded that between DPR and seawater desalination, the embodied
energy and greenhouse emission is very low in DPR. Although DPR can be
considered as the best sustainable process, there are some natural factors
that need to be considered first.
Table 1: A brief summary of tentative capital costs, running costs and net
present value (NPV) for seawater desalination, IPR, DPR and dual pipe
resuse (Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence, 2015).

Plant Capital
Cost

Seawater
Desalination
$ 959 M

IPR

DPR

$ 825 M

$ 616 M

Dual Pipe
Reuse
$ 1209 M

Running
Costs
NPV

$ 89 M/yr

$ 72 M/yr

$ 53 M/yr

$ 18 M/yr

$ 2128 M

$ 2011 M

$ 1316 M

$ 1386 M

Table 2 : Summary of Embodied Energy and greenhouse effect from

different water sources (Weiwei Mo ,2012; Australian Water Recycling
Centre of Excellence, 2015)
Water Sources

Embodied
Energy (MJ/m3 of
water)

Desalination
(Reverse
Osmosis)
Desalination
(MSF)
DPR
Rainwater
conserve

24

Total
Greenhouse
Component
(kgCO2/m3)
6.52 8.2

39
3-5
1-2

1.95
0.45

Suitability of location
Recycling is not the best option for all the countries across the world.
There are countries like drought prone, arid and dessert land where water
scarcity is large but they are coastal to seas. For such countries
desalination is the best option because recycling the limited water is not a
sustainable option. The cost of desalination might look higher but for a
bigger plant the cost decreases and the plant life is more than 50 years.
That is why countries in Middle East like Saudi Arabia and Dubai built large
scale seawater desalination plant. These countries are also planning to
integrate the solar energy in order to supply electric power to these
plants.
On the other hand, recycling is best for those countries who still did not
face any water scarcity problem but in the future they might face more
water demand. So for these countries, building water recycling plant is the
sustainable option as they do not need to search for an alternative source
of water. Australia can go for both the technology as it has the benefits of
both. Recycling also requires a good centralized water sewerage system.
Lastly it will not be a suitable option to go for rain water or storm water
conservation as these kind of options are not dependable. They depend
solely on weather which is unpredictable and changing. Moreover, when
the demand of water all over the world is rising, this option looks very
obsolete.
Reference
1. Water for all (2015), Desalination and Water Recycling, Mission2017.

2. Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence (2013), DRINKING

WATER THROUGH RECYCLING, a report of a study by the australian
academy of technological sciences and engineering (atse).
3. Weiwei Mo (2012), Water's Dependence on Energy: Analysis of Embodied
Energy in Water and Wastewater Systems, University of South Florida.