Algal pathway towards meeting United Nation’s sustainable development goal 6

ABSTRACT

Recent reports have pointed out that, at the current rate of development, the world will fail to meet Goal 6 of the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ensure the availability of sanitation and water for all. Over half the world’s population in the middle- and low-income countries will not have sanitation and water with sufficient quality and quantity due to limited financial and freshwater resources. An algal-based wastewater treatment (A-WWT) system is proposed here as an appropriate and affordable pathway to support SDG 6 as well as 11 other related SDGs. Our previous reports on this A-WWT system have documented its ability to produce discharge-ready water, comparable in quality to that of the conventional activated sludge-based (CAS) system, but at lower initial cost and lower energy needs. In the current study, we demonstrate that activated carbon adsorption and ozonation are potential follow-up processes to reclaim high-quality water for beneficial reuse. The quality of water reclaimed by the A-WWT system is shown to be superior to what is currently possible with the CAS system. Microbial assessments and Microtox toxicity assays confirm that the reclaimed water from the A-WWT system is safe for agricultural reuse. The A-WWT system holds promise as a greener alternative to meet the four targets under SDG 6: improving water quality, wastewater treatment, and safe reuse; increasing water-use efficiency and ensuring freshwater supplies; implementing water reuse management; and protecting and restoring water-related ecosystems.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable development goals
• reclaimed water
• algal wastewater treatment
• appropriate technologies
• reclaimed water quality

Acknowledgments

Support provided by City of Las Cruces Utilities Division in accommodating the STaRR system at the Las Cruces Wastewater Treatment Plant is acknowledged. Support provided in part by the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Reinventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt), award EEC 1028968; the College of Engineering at New Mexico State University, and the Ed & Harold Foreman Endowed Chair are acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Statement of informed consent, human/Animal rights

No conflicts, informed consent, human or animal rights applicable.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [EEC 1028968].