Clean water and sanitation – DDRN

Solar Thermal Project Provides Hot Water to Quilpué School

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 23:15:29 +0000

The Luis Cruz Martínez School in Quilpué, a school with a high level of vulnerability, installed a solar panel system to supply renewable energy to its library and other community areas on the campus. Then, its members went a step further and installed solar thermal panels in the bathrooms for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children, generating a series of benefits that extended to the entire community.

Quilpué, the so-called “City of the Sun”, is located in the Valparaíso Region of central Chile. It is the third most populated municipality in the region, behind the communes of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. In the summer, Quilpué enjoys long, hot, sunny days. This small municipality has a calm atmosphere and pace. In the Belloto Norte sector is the Luis Cruz Martínez School, a municipal facility with a high vulnerability index that for ten years has been seeking to incorporate environmental sustainability transversally into its routines and daily life.

Although this school is connected to the electrical grid, the school community decided in 2020 to implement solar panel solutions and solar thermal systems as a way to educate students, parents, guardians, teachers, and school officials about the benefits of this type of energy and, at the same time, solve its infrastructure problems at a lower cost. María José Sepúlveda and María Eugenia Cataldo, both teachers and members of the school’s Environmental Committee, explains that the initiative to take advantage of solar energy and apply it to the establishment began after being part of an energy efficiency contest: “We realized that we were consuming too much light. Our costs were very high. It was after that experience that we asked ourselves as a community, ‘what can we do?’ And just then the Government’s Environmental Protection Funds appeared and we applied to finance our solar panels.”

During 2021, the Luis Cruz Martínez School, through the “Encuentro Solar” project, installed a solar panel system to supply renewable energy to the library and other community places on campus. It should be noted that this establishment receives more than 600 students each year. “Currently, the library’s television, computers, and monitoring center (security cameras) receive solar energy, and we also made a connection to a garden,” explains Ana Hernández Duarte, a geography professor and thesis student of the Interdisciplinary Doctorate in Environmental Sciences at the University of Playa Ancha, who is part of the Environmental Committee of the establishment.

Likewise, during 2022, the community installed a solar thermal system that provides hot water to the sinks and showers in the bathrooms of the children who are in the preschool stage. This project called “Solar Encounter 2.0” was on the priority list of the school community. This is because, despite the fact that Quilpué is called “the city of the Sun”, it has a valley climate whose characteristics are extreme minimum and maximum temperatures. “During winter, it is very cold in the morning and very icy during the day,” says Professor Sepúlveda. “The kindergarten and pre-kindergarten teachers approached the school’s Environmental Committee to request hot water for the bathrooms in these classes. We, as the Environmental Committee, gathered this information and saw that providing warm or heated water through renewable energy was a priority,” explains Hernández.

The bathroom has an associated shower and the school has often lent this infrastructure to vulnerable families in the school community. “We call it a ‘social bathroom’ because there is a family with very few resources in the community that uses this bathroom,” explains Cataldo. In addition to contributing monetary and energy savings for the school and social help for those who need it in their community, the solar panels and the solar thermal system for bathrooms and showers allow for the development of environmental awareness among the members of their community.

In this context, Hernández mentions that despite the fact that the school is in an urban area connected to the electrical grid, as a school community they seek to refute the idea that solar energy is only viable in rural areas when the objective of the municipal establishment is to promote environmental education in the educational community (and other schools in the area) and reduce emissions in general.

“In recent years, the school has seen an increase in students, and it often happens in Latin American countries that the infrastructure of the establishments begin to age and that the electrical system is not always updated at the same time as other renovations. Although there is no specific limitation because we are not in an isolated territory where we do not have access to the electrical grid, we can be a model in education for sustainability and raise awareness among the entire educational community (other schools, parents and guardians) that this type of technology can be used and is accessible. This is because, in general, there is the conception that photovoltaic panels are only used in Germany. So we, as an educational community that works for sustainability, wanted to demystify that idea a little,” says Hernández.

Connections with the community

For the school community, the “Encuentro Solar” 1 and 2 projects not only included the installation of solar thermal panels but also training in renewable energy, environmental education, and adaptation and mitigation to climate change in their community, taught by professionals and academics from the Catholic University of Valparaíso. “There is a mother in the community who, when we taught about solar panels and dehydrators, replicated the system when she had financial problems and started her own business. Now she has a solar oven that she uses to cook and dehydrate fruit,” explains Sepúlveda.

The solar energy photovoltaic system installed by the “Encuentro Solar 1” project reserves energy to use in cases of power outages. “This backup is used to power the school’s security cameras and also one of the pre-school classrooms, which would be like our place in case no one anywhere in the school had electricity.” The next step for this community is to apply for a project with automated and efficient irrigation for the school garden, which will be connected to the electrical grid of the solar panels already installed.

An example for its community

According to local environmental authorities, the proactivity of the Quilpueíno establishment has an impact on the local school community that is generating more awareness, ties and sustainability, which is the result of collective work. The Luis Cruz Martínez School is part of a community with several levels, made up of students, parents, educational assistants, and teachers. Each child and person in the school has a family as well. “Their range of action is also quite wide, and we even link up in one of these projects with a Neighborhood Council. So, we try to create this network where the resources obtained from the project are utilized as efficiently as possible to maximize opportunities and how beneficial it can be,” says Hernández.

Currently, the school has links to the Catholic University of Valparaíso, the National Forestry Corporation (CONAF), and the Corporation of the Municipality of Quilpué. “We have a support network at this time that has been forged through habits. There are even other schools that ask us for advice and help. They come to visit us, to learn about the environmental facilities we have at the school,” adds Sepúlveda.

Through all of the above, they seek to demonstrate to their community that it is possible to find sustainable answers to their problems. “We are executing an energy transition. We are moving to be able to use renewable energy. This is because we seek to be an example for other establishments or communities. If you are in a more isolated territory, solar energy or solar panels are often the only solution to have energy, but when you are already in a context where a network is available, there is usually more resistance to sustainable solutions and, of course, we want to demystify ideas that sustainable solutions are far away or difficult,” says Hernández.

“We even held a workshop on the costs and benefits of having this type of infrastructure (solar panels) for the parents of the school, so that they can implement it in their homes. So, it is like putting the point up for discussion to generate that ecological transition.” However, Hernández says that as a community they are proud that the sustainable technical solutions for the school have been maintained over time. “Our first project was to reduce waste in 2017 and it is still operating. In addition, all of our infrastructure continues to be connected to each other and continues to improve or complement other needs or problems that we want to solve or improve. We continue with this great goal that we have set ourselves of being a model for an educational project that involves education for sustainability,” he adds.

In this context, the Luis Cruz Martínez School has made presentations and talks to other establishments in the area, to the municipal corporation to which the school belongs, and at COP26, disseminating the educational project of the establishment.

“We identified that the educational community understood renewable energy as distant. So, being able to have it in your school and seeing that it works in your library with solar panels, that you go to wash your hands in pre-primary and the water is warm, is something demonstrative and also raises awareness and is part of the children’s daily lives. This is transforming not only their perception and how they receive this type of technology or this type of practice, but also that they are already incorporating some behaviors and patterns with the change,” explains Hernández.

Maintenance: the limitations of the Solar Encounter project

Despite all the benefits and impacts of the “Solar Encounter 2.0” project for its community, this initiative also has its limitations. The installation of the “Solar Encounter 2.0”, for example, included four million pesos for financing (approximately 4,500 dollars). However, repairs and the cost of materials are not included in this budget. In addition, there have been problems with maintenance and coordination of visits. “The solar thermal panel had a leak. After a period of use, like any pipe, it began to leak water. And that is solved by a technician coming. The other thing is that sometimes it has to be regulated, there is a regulator in which the hot water and the cold water have to be balanced. Because if you open the tap, sometimes hot water comes out, and that is dangerous. So there has to be a balance between cold and hot water,” explains Cataldo.

The teacher explains that “at the beginning we had to introduce the team to both the solar panels and the solar thermal, we created a manual with instructions on what to do, how to maintain it, the minimum maintenance that must be done, and we tried to spread it to the assistants. But the same thing happened to us at the beginning when they turned off the hot water taps. Regarding maintenance, it is difficult for us to keep these technicians because they are not so constant over time. Sometimes the service is not on the schedule when one would like. We have to coordinate well in advance for the maintenance visit or any problem that one may have.”

“The dynamics of a school is complex because it is a municipal establishment with more than 600 students, so things have to be done well in advance and they have to be within the budget for the year. For example, now we are thinking about 2025, so we have those types of precautions or details in mind now,” adds Hernández. Despite the difficulties, Hernández, Sepúlveda and Cataldo highlight the importance of communication and community commitment for the success of these solar and solar thermal initiatives.

“What we are achieving is that the school is entirely sustainable,” says Sepúlveda. Cataldo says that “there is a complete change from how the children were before and now. They have more environmental awareness that they take home.” As for other potential uses, she adds that “I would put solar panels on all the lights here in the school. So that would be ideal. Do more things with this energy. This is a school with a high vulnerability index in which not all parents can pay for electricity. I know that there are many parents who are hanging from the electrical grids. If we had panels, more solar panels, and they knew how to use them, they would not need to be hanging from the electrical grids,” adds the teacher.

“We are motivated to develop environmental awareness in students. In the end, we are already experiencing climate change. Climate change is here. We are experiencing it, so it is very important that the children are aware that with small actions they can contribute to climate change not being so harmful,” concludes Cataldo.

*This article is part of the “Fair Energy Solutions” program by Climate Tracker and Open Society Foundation

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

From Clean to Contaminated: Indian Rivers Call for Urgent Action

Nilesh Vijaykumar — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:30:04 +0000

On a sun-drenched summer day, Vejle Ådal’s serene banks come alive with people strolling along its picturesque shores, casting their lines in tranquil waters, or embarking on leisurely kayak rides. My journey led me to Vejle from a city in India nestled along the banks of a river ten times the size of Vejle Ådal. Strikingly, the residents of my Indian city share no positive experiences with their river. This stark contrast between the two rivers’ realities serves as a compelling exploration.

Unsustainable Growth

I come from Hyderabad — a vibrant metropolis with a population of more than 7 million. The city was established in the year 1591 on the banks of the Musi River, in southern India. It has seen a sharp rise in its economic growth over the past couple of decades. The World Economic Forum ranked Hyderabad as one of the world’s top 10 fastest-growing cities by gross domestic product (GDP). But this growth has been unsustainable. The Musi River’s total length is 260 km, of which around 50 km courses through Hyderabad. This entire stretch is critically polluted, as per the Central Pollution Control Board of India.

Hyderabad generates 2,750 million litres of wastewater every day but has a wastewater treatment capacity of just 906 million litres per day. The remaining 1,850 million litres of untreated wastewater daily ends up in the Musi River and the hundreds of lakes in Hyderabad. Not surprisingly, residents of Hyderabad sarcastically refer to the Musi River as a «nala», meaning a channel of wastewater. Scientific studies into the water quality have highlighted toxic concentrations of heavy metals, antibiotics, and pathogenic multidrug-resistant bacteria.

Musi, Once A River Buzzing With Activity

Historical records that mention Hyderabad are incomplete without the mention of the Musi River. Most mention how the river would swell during the rains and reduce to a trickle in the dry season. The East India Gazetteer, 1815, notes that the river “…runs very rapidly in the rains but in the dry season has scarcely two feet of water.”

Another record, H.R.H. the Duke of Clarence & Avondale in Southern India, 1891, paints a vivid picture: “The dry bed of the river is cultivated with cucumbers and vegetable marrows, and alongside the thin stream of water in its centre the native washerman beats to pieces upon the stones the shirts and garments alike of his Native and European clients. Camels stretch out their long necks and drink the turbid water; elephants toss it in cooling streams over their backs, and buffaloes, less careful of cleanliness and of appearance, wallow in undisguised enjoyment in the mud.“

But one need not travel that long back in time to see the river in a healthy state. “I often used to go for a swim in the Musi River when I was a kid. We even used to catch fish in it, which is now unthinkable. Until the early 1970s, the river water was also a source of drinking water and provided clean irrigation water for hundreds of farmers. But since the 1980s the river’s condition has worsened,” says Batte Shankar of the NGO Musi Parirakshana Samithi (Musi Protection Committee), pioneering the cause of Musi River restoration since 2000.

The Gradual Death of the Musi River

Dissolved oxygen (DO) is the amount of oxygen available in the water. For thriving aquatic life in freshwaters, a DO concentration of at least 4 milligrams per litre (mg/L) is required. When DO dips below 2mg/L, the water turns hypoxic; unsuitable for aquatic life. In 1969, a study published in Hydrobiologia detailed dissolved oxygen concentration in the Musi River, indicating good health: the DO levels ranged from 7mg/L to 9mg/L. Within two decades, the condition deteriorated. A 1986 study reported that the DO levels plummeted to zero.

Presently, environmental agencies monitor water quality at 12 sites on the Musi River, six of which are in and around Hyderabad city. In 2022, the average DO concentration in the Musi River was less than 1 mg/L at five out of these six locations. In contrast, in 2022 the DO concentration in Vejle Ådal ranged between 7mg/L to 12mg/L.

The Challenges

Hydrologist and a campaigner of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from Hyderabad, 70-year-old BV Subba Rao, says that the fate of the Musi River is connected to that of the Hussainsagar Lake, with a waterspread of 4.7 sq.km. Untreated wastewater and industrial wastewater from different parts of Hyderabad flow into this lake and from here, polluted water flows through a channel into the Musi River.

“When I was a kid, I used to visit with my mother the beautiful gardens located along the water channel that connects Hussainsagar and the Musi River. Now, there remain no gardens and the channel carries highly polluted water that raises a terrible stench. Over the years, various projects were initiated to restore the river but all of them failed as they ignored ecological restoration and focused on cosmetic beautification,” says Subba Rao.

Another prominent environmentalist and a public policy expert from Hyderabad, 57-year-old Dr. Donthi Narasimha Reddy says, “There was a time when people would enjoy going for a stroll along the Musi riverfront. The river was not a polluted, stinking mess. There is an urgent need to manage the river as part of a larger River Basin system with a multipronged approach of stopping the inflow of untreated wastewater, reforestation for watershed management, and removing obstructions hindering the river’s flow.”

Musi Is Not An Isolated Case

The ecological destruction of the Musi River is the story of most rivers flowing through Indian cities. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in India monitors water quality at 1,920 locations on 603 rivers. Of these, 279 (46%) are polluted as per CPCB’s Polluted River Stretches for Restoration of Water Quality – 2022 report, which lists 311 polluted river stretches in India. Analysis of the report reveals more than 30 of India’s 46 million-plus population cities are located on or close to the banks of polluted rivers.

River Restoration Challenges and Efforts in Denmark

Things were not always fine with Vejle Ådal. In fact, like most other rivers and streams in Denmark, Vejle Ådal too faces the challenge of alteration of its watercourse. The book Running Waters: Historical Development and Restoration of Lowland Danish Streams provides insights into how the watercourse of Danish streams got severely altered due to human actions, especially intensified agriculture over the last century. A staggering 90% of the more than 64,000 km of streams in Denmark have been impacted by the Anthropocene, leaving the country with almost no pristine streams and river valleys.

To tackle the problem of altered watercourses Denmark has taken up hundreds of river restoration projects across the country, known as «vandløbsrestaurering». The restoration works started as long back as 1983 in Vejle County (Vejle Amt). Various projects have been carried out for the restoration of Vejle Å at Gödding, Bindeballe Bæk, Refsgårde and Lihmskov and of its tributaries, Bindeballe Møllebæk, Egtved Å and Højen Å.

Social entrepreneur, communications coach, and a resident of Vejle, Sara Peterman, says “A clean water stream passes close to my house. I often walk by it, and every time, it offers a sense of well-being and tranquility. There are many places where the water level is shallow and my kids and I can go for a paddle. I feel confident about the water quality.”

Another Vejle resident, Jesper Kenn Olsen, an ultra distance runner and founder of the World Runners Club, believes Vejle is the most beautiful city in Denmark. The main reason: Vejle Ådal. After his second world run through different continents – 36,917 km between 2008-2012 – Jesper settled down in Vejle. “When I returned from the two runs around the world it was quite difficult to find any place that provided the grand nature and beautiful surroundings that I had experienced when running across the different continents. I take a walk or run along the Vejle Ådal almost daily. A day doesn’t seem complete without enjoying nature and scenery!”, exclaims Jesper.

On the benefits of clean rivers, Jesper explains, “A clean river and an unpolluted nature are important for the well-being of the people, and also for businesses. I coach about 60 ultrarunners from Denmark and abroad. Once a year when I gather the runners for a training camp, it is important for me to be able to provide a beautiful environment – and Vejle Ådal certainly does that. It’s one of the best locations in Denmark because of the diverse terrain.” Flagging an issue, Jesper says, “There has been an increase in heavy traffic in the vicinity of the Vejle Ådal over the past few years. This trend often necessitates enjoying Vejle Ådal during non-peak hours which is regrettable, as it raises concerns about the well-being of the local wildlife. It is surprising that policymakers have not taken substantial action to address this matter, given that Vejle Ådal represents a significant asset for Vejle.”

Different Challenges, Shared Initiatives

As many would like to point out, the challenges faced in the conservation of rivers and their scale vary widely in India and Denmark. For example, consider these statistics:

Wastewater generated by Denmark in 2021: 241 million cubic meters. Wastewater generated by Indian cities in 2021: 26,414 million cubic meters

The longest river in India: Ganga (2,500+ kilometres). The longest river in Denmark: Gudenå (160 kilometres)

But what binds together these two distant countries are the negative impacts of the destruction of natural resources as the ever-growing threat of climate change looms large. Like Denmark, India is also working to restore its ancient rivers to their pristine selves through various government-funded programs. In 2015, 70% of the rivers (275 out of 390) monitored by the Central Pollution Control Board were polluted whereas, in 2022, the number was reduced to 46% (279 out of 603).

Denmark is a global expert in wastewater treatment and has various success stories to share, like the restoration of coastal waters in Copenhagen. A collaboration between India and Denmark is inevitable. One of them is already in the works – a laboratory to aid in monitoring and improvement of water quality in the Ganga River and its tributary Varuna River.

When it comes to my hometown, Hyderabad, the government is working on restoring the Musi River and has established the Musi Riverfront Development Corporation to improve the river’s state of affairs. It remains to be seen how long it will take before the Musi River is no longer sarcastically referred to as a «nala» by the people of Hyderabad.

Nilesh Vijaykumar has a M.Sc. Science and Communications, Savitribai Phule Pune University, India. In September 2022, Nilesh relocated to Vejle, Denmark, and is a DDRN correspondent.

Danish Water Technology Researchers are Creating Development – and Good Business

Asger Roejle Christensen — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 13:59:38 +0000

The Danish water technology sector, which contributes to better drinking water supplies and wastewater treatment everywhere in the world, is exporting its equipment and solutions to the South and North for billions of Danish kroner. It is all built on research.

Bjørn K. Jensen has ”one leg in each camp”, if you ask him whether he is an academic researcher or a businessman within the field of Danish water technology. “But I am not the only one. Like me, many people in this sector have one leg in each camp. It mirrors that we have developed a very special tradition for collaboration. All of us are mixing research and business; we are speaking the same language and understand each other. That is a very good thing”.

Bjørn K. Jensen has been part of this development all the way. As a young, recently graduated microbiologist, he carried out a research project in Northern France on marine pollution from big tanker wrecks in the 1980s. He worked for many years at DTU Environment at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), and later, in the semi-private sector as a research director at the Water Quality Institute (VKI). Now, he is chief advisor emeritus at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), after having been the deputy director general until 2017. Parallel with his professional career he has been working in water organizations in Denmark and abroad. He was chairman of the Danish Water Forum for many years, is now the vice chairman, and he was president of the European Water Association until 2021.

“The Water Sector in Denmark is different from almost all other R&D sectors in the sense that we have a very close cooperation between the different actors; researchers, public authorities, the utilities sector as well as private companies. Everybody is cooperating in promoting Danish water competences and solutions and thereby Danish exports in the field.”

According to Bjørn K. Jensen, Danish researchers from universities and research institutes are contributing, to different degrees, to all kinds of public-private consortia. “Sometimes, it’s research with not so many companies and utilities participating. And sometimes, it’s more business oriented ventures, where we are demonstrating what we are able to do in cooperation with each other. Most Danish water researchers are not shy in relation to participating in commercial export initiatives – also with their researcher-hat on”.

Twenty years ago, the Danish Water Forum was created as a forum for these kinds of cooperation, and Bjørn K. Jensen was among the initiators. “We felt a need for uniting the sector even more than it already was. We wanted a forum where we could gather researchers, utilities, public institutions and businesses even more. We already thought at that time that it would create more impact if we could demonstrate combined solutions. We wanted to not only sell a high-quality pump. We also wanted to present the buyers in any country, in the South and North, combined system solutions. Such solutions are not only presenting technical installations but also how to build the necessary societal and governance-related institutions in order to make the equipment work properly and contribute to a more sustainable use of resources in that area”.

Nowadays, the Danish Water Forum has grown into an influential body. In Spring 2022, 140 professionals participated in its research conference in Copenhagen. Speakers were, among many other things, discussing an official government goal of achieving 40 billion Danish kroner worth of exports in the water sector before the year of 2030, as previously expressed in the so-called “water vision” by the Ministry of Environment in 2014. This goal seemed very ambitious and maybe slightly unrealistic to most participants, but a current combined export of between 20 and 30 bill Danish kroner is still an achievement.

A part of the conference program was very business-oriented i.e., how to get the most out of participation in international trade events and other international events. “In this context, it should be remembered that all the competencies within the companies and institutions are based on research. Researchers have contributed for years to knowledge, which is a prerequisite for developing technology and solutions, and they are, in many cases, employed in companies after having carried out research for a while”, Bjørn K. Jensen underlines.

A priority field

Bjørn K. Jensen was originally a microbiologist with an expertise in microbial degradation of organic contaminants by bacteria. As a young researcher at DTU Environment, he contributed to the development of new knowledge on how to clean contaminated groundwater, a focus sector for Danish environmental science at the time. “We tried to find out how you can degrade contaminating substances like oil, petroleum, phenols and the like, that leak from old industrial sites, gasoline stations, and landfills into the groundwater. Only later did the use of pesticides in the agricultural sector come into focus”.

The research group at DTU had a great impact internationally and many networks in the North, especially with researchers in Canada and the U.S., were built. Later, Bjørn K. Jensen built up a new groundwater and microbiology section at VKI. More work focused on development projects in countries in the Global South, funded by Danida, and Bjørn K. Jensen actively took part in projects in Africa and Asia at the same time as he was the head of department. Most of the projects were short-term development projects, two or three weeks at a time, where he used his expertise from many years of research.

“I believe I was the only one in a management position at VKI at the time who earned most of my salary in projects that I was conducting myself”. Building small waterworks and water supply schemes to supply enough safe water to mainly rural communities in the South was a priority for Danida in the 1990s. There were many projects going on. Many former Danish researchers, now consultants, took part in them. The dividing line between development projects and research projects was very sharp at the time. Private consultancy companies like Cowi, Carl Bro, Rambøll and Niras were extremely busy, and a lot of Danish experience in the field of water was harvested. It was already becoming a major export product.

Other Danish companies sold pumps, valves, thermostats, or water meters as part of the same donor-funded projects. Others developed expertise in hydrological models to predict the water flow consequences of each new water well. These included Grundfos, Danfoss, AVK, Krüger, Kamstrup and DHI. A very competitive Danish water sector was growing. The Danida-funded research projects – apart from a large number of PhD-projects that were often conducted by South students from universities in the South who attended courses at Danish universities – were mostly focused on development. But at the same time, Bjørn K. Jensen and his colleagues at Danish universities were able to secure serious funding for larger and more ambitious research projects from different EU funds.

The full package

There are several reasons as to why Danish research institutions and private companies have been able to develop such strong expertise and a dominant position in global research on water supplies and water resources in relation to the environment. “Very early, in the 1970s, the Danish government established, under the newly established Ministry of Environment, ambitious and far-sighted research programs with large funding to support research into water topics. These programs continued throughout many years. Shortly after, in the 1980s, Danida began giving a lot of donor money to water projects around the world. This created jobs for many of the newly educated water experts and became the basis for Danish consultants’ companies and tech-companies to grow”.

Still, according to Bjørn K. Jensen, in spite of all the efforts, the obvious advantages from offering “the full package” to buyers in the South have not been achieved yet. “We are trying to sell the full package, integrated system solutions, involving different types of partners. The directors of the big Danish companies here in Denmark agree with us. But the local offices of the big Danish companies around the world are basically sales people. They are happy just to sell pumps, which is fully understandable, and they don’t care so much about the rest of the package”, he explains.

Therefore, he and many others in the Danish water sector see future perspectives in small ”demonstration projects” like the one that has just been launched in the spring of 2022 in cooperation with the Water Resources Department in Tamil Nadu in Southern India. This demonstration project will showcase different Danish state-of-the-art technologies and solutions to ensure sustainability in using groundwater for the drinking water supply at a village level. When such an integrated solution has been demonstrated, it can then be replicated in other rural communities all over India.

”No, we didn’t know about the partners before. They are not part of any old network. Experts at the Danish embassy in India identified them for us within the so-called Strategic Sector Cooperation (SSC) programme. This is a new instrument established in selected embassies that facilitates bilateral public-public cooperation with the aim of introducing Danish smart solutions, which I find really promising”.

Finding groundwater from a helicopter

To illustrate his points, Bjørn K. Jensen mentions the Aarhus-based company, SkyTEM, which, in his eyes, is a “good example” of how excellence in research develops into export-oriented business. At Aarhus University, for many years, a group of geo-physical scientists have tried to develop technologies to find groundwater that is suitable for abstraction into drinking water.

One method that proved to be promising 20 to 25 years ago was flying over an area with a helicopter at low altitude, measuring the soil layers by electromagnetic techniques, and then analyzing the geophysical signals and translating it to geology through a specially developed software. The university researchers then created their own private company, SkyTEM. “It was pure basic research to begin with. The researchers in Aarhus made these experiments entirely because they felt it was interesting. But then it developed into a successful private company, because they had in fact invented a fabulous tool. Earlier you had to dig one borehole, and then another one, and then another one, until you found a suitable groundwater aquifer for groundwater abstraction. Now you are able to avoid wasting time and resources like that. The experts are now flying around the whole world, not least in the Global South, finding groundwater for everybody on an entirely commercial basis”, Bjørn K. Jensen explains.

“This company has been able to grow, partly because of the tradition for collaboration we have within this sector, and because of some entrepreneurial spirits in the research community”, he continues. “Researchers considered the findings interesting, utilities did the same, companies started buying its services, and authorities controversially decided to use SkyTEM as a standard during a large mapping programme of Denmark’s own groundwater resources, which took place until 2017. It created jobs and some of the best young researchers drifted over to the company. And, it gave the new technology an official stamp of approval which was a good starting point for export growth”.

Dealing With a Water-Hungry Enterprise: How Science is Looking for a Water-Less Copper Industry in Chile

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Mon, 08 May 2023 11:11:17 +0000

Chile has its massive copper mining industry to thank for a sizable portion of its gross national production, but the country can also point to this same sector as the culprit in a major drought that has affected this region for many years. What is the nature of this water shortage? How could it be addressed?

Empty and dusty basins. Satellite images of dry reservoirs. Goats, horses and sheeps looking for water. Men and women carrying buckets to get themselves drinking water. Trees falling dry. Local administrations are asking the central government to declare a state of emergency due to the alarming drought. These difficult images do not come from a specific place but belong to different parts of the world. Spain, Italy, Mexico, France, Chile are some of the countries that are going through an emergency due to water scarcity in their territories. According to data provided by the UN, by 2025 half of the world’s population will live in areas of water scarcity.

Chile – a country that is composed of deserts, valleys, seas and mountains in a single territory – has been going through a mega-drought for more than a decade. This phenomenon mainly affects the central zone of the country and implies a pluviometric deficit of an average of between 20 and 40 percent of annual precipitation compared to the historical record.

In this scenario, copper mining, a productive activity that has been one of the main economic activities in Chile for the last 50 years, becomes important. It contributes 10% of Chilean GDP and represents more than 55% of all Chilean exports. However, despite their economic contribution, mining operations use between 3% and 4% of the total national water available resources. This situation is paradoxical, since the freshwater sources available are diminishing along with the drought. This situation puts mining in a very awkward position in front of environmental groups of Chilean society because water is not only needed for human consumption but also pollutes and destroys valuable ecosystems.

“The copper will still require many liters of water to continue to be processed,” explains Andreina García, academic from the Department of Mining Engineering of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the Universidad de Chile.

Currently, mining operations obtain water from rivers, aquifers, underground water sources and the sea. Using less and less water in mining operations is a challenge because the copper is very deep and in order to get it, more rock is needed to be processed, which needs more water.

So, how does the mining industry work in a water scarcity environment and what technical solutions are being developed to deal with the lack of water?

Water in big mining operations

The National Copper Corporation of Chile, better known as “Codelco”, is a Chilean state company dedicated to copper mining, an area in which it is known for being one of the largest companies on the planet.

Until the 1990s, most of the mining operations in Chile were carried out by Codelco. However, since those years –and as part of a process of liberalization of the Chilean economy after the end of the dictatorship–, the mining industry began to open up and international mining companies started to settle in the country beginning a cycle where private mining is the main character of this productive activity.

The academic from the Universidad de Chile and AMTC researcher, Christian Ihle, explains the context of this installation: “International private mining companies formulated their copper extraction projects in a different water context, since in those years water an abund resource and the rivers, afluents and other water sources were near of the mining operations,” Ihle explains.

“Many of these operations were located in the Atacama region, one of the driest deserts in the world at 2,000, 4,000, 5,000 meters above sea level. Most of these operations involve transporting and moving water for 200 or 300 kilometers. These are operations with a considerable energy and infrastructure cost”, indicates the academic.

“After a few years, water began to become a critical, scarce and expensive resource. Scarce because there was no longer plenty of water near the mining operations and it was also expensive. Also because in some cases when desalination technology infrastructure was implemented to bring water from the sea”, indicates the academic.

Given this scenario, the government of President Gabriel Boric announced in June 2022, in its first public account, an investment of 86 million dollars for Coldeco. “We believe in a mining activity that is responsible and that improves its socio-environmental standards. That is why CODELCO has established, by 2026 a commitment to reduce their gas emissions by 64%, also reduce in 42% its fresh water consumption and to recycle 55% of industrial waste”, indicated the president.

Science, research, technology: an approach to solutions

But how do public and private mining companies try to reduce their water consumption? And how can innovation, science and technology play a role in this challenge?

A group of researchers gathered under the name “Water, Environment and Sustainability” led by Andreina García, an academic from the Department of Mining Engineering of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the Universidad de Chile, seek to develop technological solutions as a strategy to address the water scarcity in the mining industry.

The research group has three lines: The first aims to improve the seawater desalination process. The second seeks to reuse mining liquids used in operations. The third line of research treat natural and groundwater enriched with elements that are highly toxic for human consumption.

Desalination membranes, bioreactors and water treatment

According to García, the desalination of seawater is the main strategy that mining has to supply itself with water in the future. “It is expected that between now and 2030, 50% of the water used by mining will come from seawater and mainly desalinated seawater,” says the academic.

And she adds: “The process currently installed in desalination plants in Chile is a process known as reverse osmosis, which has limitations in its operation. One of these limitations is the useful life of the desalination filters. What we do in the laboratory is produce new and improved membranes to optimize the desalination process”, she explains.

“We are developing desalination membranes with copper that prevent microorganisms present in seawater from plugging, dirtying and collapsing the system. We are also looking to extend the useful life of the material.”

The second research project that seeks to reduce water consumption in large-scale mining has to do with the recovery of water from any residue from mining operations through bioreactors or microorganisms that seek to make the water suitable for agricultural irrigation.

Researchers are currently working with the Tranque Ovejería, located in the Til Til commune, and the Tranque Talabre, located northeast of Calama, a city located in the north of the country.

“Depending on the water, there are different treatments because the water from the dams in the central zone of Chile is chemically very different from that from the dams in the northern zone,” explains Yasna Tapia Fernandez, AMTC researcher in charge of this project.

“We have the chemical challenge of being able to treat that water so that it meets the regulations and reduce the concentration of metals in the water through biological treatment through bioreactors,” she adds.

Finally, in the third line of research is the Solar Senic project, a system for removing arsenic from surface water or groundwater whose implementation is already underway. In northern Chile, surface waters can be highly contaminated with arsenic, a chemical element that is highly toxic and carcinogenic. Through the use of nanomaterials and sunlight, the researchers developed a technology that manages to remove arsenic from the water, converting the water into potable water for later use by indigenous communities in the Atacama.

“It is a challenge to be able to find partners and acceptance by the industry. Nowadays, these research, development and technology programs force you to look for that associated entity that not only believes in the project or initiative, but is also willing to make financial contributions so that it can be executed correctly”, explains García.

And Yasna Tapia adds that the industry must look for other solutions to produce copper without water in a future scenario. “In a scenario where we are facing the consequences of climate change, we have to think about more sustainable technologies than buying these desalination plants that are very large and very expensive,” she finalized.

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

Chile Faces the Mega Drought Looking for Technical and Social Solutions

Marta Apablaza Riquelme — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 08:07:57 +0000

According to data provided by the UN, by 2025 half of the world’s population will live in areas of water scarcity, making it essential to develop mechanisms and technology to deal with it. In Chile, researchers and experts not only advocate technical or scientific solutions but also political and social solutions.

Chile contains different climates and geographical settings. On the one hand, there is the radical aridity of the north of the country due the Atacama desert. On the other hand the central zone of the country is configured through valleys, mountains and rivers where the largest number of the Chilean population lives. Finally, the south of Chile has a more indomitable nature where there is native forest, volcanoes, rivers and it often rains.

According to a study carried out by Fundación Chile, the country has more than 1,200 rivers, 15,000 lakes and water from rainfall that exceeds eight times the world average. However, for a decade Chile has been going through a mega-drought. Mega-drought is the name of the phenomenon that mainly affects the central zone of the country since 2010, and that involves a rainfall deficit with an average of between 20 and 40 percent of annual rainfall, compared to the historical record.

The problem of water scarcity is not only local but global. In 2010 the UN recognized access to water and sanitation as an essential human right. However, recognizing this right presents a challenge since climate change generates a growing difficulty in supplying water in its different uses. According to data provided by the UN, 40% of the world’s population experiences water scarcity and 2.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. By 2025, half of the world’s population will live in areas of water scarcity, and the mechanisms to deal with it are essential.

A beautiful valley without water

150 kilometers north of Santiago, the capital of Chile, there is a small town called “Valle Hermoso”. The name of this town suggests that a beautiful green accompanies a valley with rivers, mountains and a lush forest. For decades, thousands of Chileans have visited “Valle Hermoso” on weekends to buy vests hand-woven by the women of the town. This was a traditional walk for families where you could enjoy the fresh air of the valleys and do some shopping.

However, in 2022, this trip does not seem very appealing because “Valle Hermoso” is not green, nor does it have a river. The shops where the artisans sell their fabrics are empty. When you reach the area, visitors are greeted by hills covered in yellow and black earth. The “Ligua” river is dry. In the empty and dusty streets of Valle Hermoso you can see different cistern trucks that deliver drinking water to houses.

The news coming from Valle Hermoso related to water scarcity is devastating. Most of the population must buy drinking water from private companies. Even the children have had to suspend their normal life as students, unable to attend classes due to lack of water.

“Years ago, everything was green here. In September, -the spring lowered the river with plenty of water. Even with my friends we built boats and held competitions and races to see who could reach the mouth of the river first,” says Francisco Arenas, Manager of the Valle Hermoso Water Cooperative.

“Now as you can see, there is nothing,” adds an artisan from Valle Hermoso who did not want to give her name for this report. She is sweeping her house at 11:00 AM in the late summer where sun and dust meets.

Climate change and drought

From a scientific perspective, the water crisis that Chile is suffering from is part of a global environmental crisis that has two causes: The first cause is the climate emergency. The second cause is anthropogenic, this means that it is caused by human activity.

Different scientifics reports have established that the increase in gas emissions causes the high pressures of the Pacific Ocean to prevent frontal systems from reaching the Central Zone of Chile. This situation results in a rainfall deficit. What was once a nice green valley in winter is now a dry yellow and gray valley.

“We have had many years with rainfall below normal,” explains Rodrigo Fuster, an academic from the Universidad de Chile. And he adds: “There is a growing demand for water that is transformed into extraction from rivers or aquifers, which is above the amount of water that the system has.”

In the 1990s, Valle Hermoso used to be a small town whose agricultural activity was supported by small farmers, however now there are large agricultural companies that produce avocados for export that consume millions of liters of drinking water, leaving little water available for human consumption.

“This means that in our country, the water crisis has a lot to do with how water is managed,” explains María Christina Fragkou, an academic at the University of Chile.

Technical solutions for water scarcity in mining

Copper mining has been one of the main economic activities in Chile during the last 50 years. Its role is such that it contributes 10% to the Chilean GDP and represents more than 55% of all Chilean exports abroad.

However, this economic activity occupies between 3% and 4% of the national total of available water resources. Scientists and researchers from Chile, aware of the scenario of water scarcity, have been focused on developing technology that allows the operations of the mining industry in the future.

Researchers from the Department of Mines of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile, gathered under the group “Water, Environment and Sustainability” are leading scientific projects with the aim of developing technological solutions for the treatment of waters and promote seawater desalination technology as a strategy to address the water scarcity that the mining industry will face in the future.

According to Andreína Garcia, the leading researcher from this group, they are doing research in 3 areas: First one is to optimize the desalination process to use seawater and prevent mining from continuing to stress freshwater sources such as rivers. The second has to do with extracting water from mining tailings that can be reused in mining operations again. Finally, the third area of research is the treatment of natural groundwater that may contain toxic waste.

This research is in its final phase. The group has conducted an arsenic removal project from surface water sources called “SolarSenic”. The system, aimed at rural communities located in San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile, stands out for its low cost and zero dependence on the electricity grid.

It should be noted that this technology uses photoactive nanomaterial that reacts in the presence of sunlight and that manages to remove up to 98% of the arsenic present in the water, achieving drinking water standards. With the permits and authorizations of the local government, the Solarsenic pilot plant should be operating in late December 2022.

Social Solutions to complex problems

María Christina Fragkou, maintains that in Chile, in order to think of solutions to water scarcity, it is very important to think not only of “technological” solutions, but also of solutions that include a political and social view of these resources, since water scarcity – she states- in the territories has to do with management and distribution for different actors in society (mining companies, agricultural companies and people) than with the limited availability of water.

“We have cases like Valle Hermoso where water scarcity is a problem of social inequality. It is the people who suffer from water scarcity and not the large agricultural companies” she indicates.

And she adds: “What is the point of looking for new sources of water? At this time, in Chile the water sources that already exist are not taken care of and a lot of effort is made to look for new waters more than to take care of the ones that already exist. In the case of Valle Hermoso, instead of questioning the model, it is decided, for example, to support desalination plant technologies that create a new market for the consumption of drinking water”.

Rodrigo Fuster adds: “In Italy, France, Germany, where they also have problems with water resources, they have had to adjust their systems in order to make production activities sustainable. Basically, water management has to be done in a different way”.

“Not only in Chile but in the world we have to migrate to a sustainable model of water management. We have to make profound and radical changes.”

“These profound and radical changes have to do with a development model in which water, rather than flowing towards money, flows towards the benefit of people”, concludes Fragkou.

Marta Apablaza Riquelme is a freelance science journalist based in Santiago, Chile

Papers by Maria Christina Fragkou:

Desalination and the disarticulation of water resources: Stabilising the neoliberal model in Chile.

Trust matters: Why augmenting water supplies via desalination may not overcome perceptual water scarcity

Danish Water Forum invites you to the 16th Annual Water Research Conference 2022

Arne Wangel — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 09:52:12 +0000

The 16th Annual Water Research Face-to-Face Conference on 20th April 2022, provides you with 50+ presentations within a wide spectrum of themes from both Denmark and abroad.

Venue: University of Copenhagen, Thorvaldsensvej 40, 1871 Frederiksberg C, Denmark

PROGRAM

OPENING SESSION, 20 April 09:45-12:25 (All time slots given in the program are CET)

THEME: Water at the crossroad
Moderator and Chair: Bjørn K. Jensen, Vice chairman, Danish Water Forum

09:45 Welcome, by Hans-Martin Friis Møller, Chairman, Danish Water Forum
09:55 Logistics, by Jesper Dannisøe, Director, Danish Water Forum
10:00 Water Valley Denmark; A new concept! Ulla Sparre, Director
10:15 The Strategic Sector Corporation Water Programs; Aims and opportunities for Danish Water Stakeholders. Tobias Kvorning, Danish EPA
10:30 The Danish 2030 Water Vision! A moderate success up for a boost! NN, DI-Vand
10.45 Central Jutland Commercial lighthouse initiative on water, based on REACT funding. Michael
Johansen, CLEAN
11:00 Q&A and Break
11:25 The value of attending large-scale water events! Ilse Korsvang, Dansk Export.
11:45 Water Technology Alliance in Europe. Jakob Andersen, Consulate General, Hamburg.
12:05 Water4All, partnership for research and innovation on water in Horizon Europe. Bjørn K. Jensen, DWF.
12:25 Lunch break

Full program, incl. technical sessions

Registration

AWARDS: DWF is proud to announce that our members Grundfos and NIRAS are sponsoring 2 awards of 10.000 DKK each, which will be given to two young scientists for the two best presentations. The award-winners will be announced at the end of the conference.

Circular economy: Breaking the plastic waves

Megan Roux — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 15:55:02 +0000

This article pertains to my ongoing MSc thesis in Sustainable Biotechnology, in which I am examining the role of bio-based plastics in the transition to a circular economy in Denmark. I am due to complete my Master’s in June 2021. In this article, I’ll be discussing the problem that I am examining in my thesis, as I am still gathering results.

You’ve heard it all before: the state of our plastic waste crisis is dire. And it’s true. Around 13 million tonnes of plastic leaks into the ocean annually, and this is just expected to increase unless we act now¹. Of all of the plastic waste generated, the majority is plastic packaging, and constitutes 60% of the coastal waste². So packaging is an interest focus area. When we zoom in on this fraction of plastic waste, it’s usually made up of polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). PET is one of the most widely used plastics, and also one of the most consumed. We use PET to make plastic bottles, and worldwide we consume about one million bottles every minute.

Linear and circular economies

One problem contributing to the plastic waste crisis is the way that we use things, which is in a very linear fashion. We take natural resources from the ground, we make a product, then we buy and use it, and then when we think we’re done with it, we just throw it away and never think about it again. But what happens to our waste? Well, in Denmark, we burn most of it for energy. When it comes to plastic, even though there are technology opportunities for the recycling of plastics, the traceability of this is quite low, and it’s still estimated that more than half of our plastics are incinerated². While incineration is better than landfilling, it still results in a high amount of CO₂ emissions, and it is the lowest value recovery option of plastics. Burning our waste and our linear systems results in a huge loss of potential. It is estimated that by not recycling plastics and having to import virgin plastic into Denmark, the country loses DKK 1.6 billion each year².

A different way of producing and consuming that is becoming increasingly popular is the concept of a circular economy. In an ideal circular economy, there is no real waste – things are designed to be used forever, and whatever isn’t used in one process for one product, may be used in another. We see this in nature, which is a system that has evolved over billions of years to sustain itself. In the circular economy, instead of throwing our waste away, we return it to the producers and it is either reused or recycled. An example of a somewhat circular system is the Dansk Retursystem.

Both on an EU-level and a national level, there is a movement from a linear system to a circular one. But to achieve a truly circular plastics economy, using renewable feedstock for new material is key.

Bio-based plastics – what are they?

Bio-based plastics are considered to play an important role in the transition to a circular plastic economy because they allow us to reduce our dependency on non-renewable feedstocks. The accepted definition of bio-based plastics, sometimes interchangeably referred to as bioplastics, is a plastic material made from renewable biomass sources. There are many different kinds of these plastics. There are some which are biodegradable, like polylactic acid (PLA) or polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), but ‘bio-based’ does not necessarily mean ‘biodegradable’.

This confusion is quite dangerous because biodegradable plastic pollutes the plastic recycling stream, so we don’t want people throwing biodegradables away with recyclables. And ‘biodegradable’ often means biodegradable only under certain conditions, like elevated temperatures, which many people might not know. Even with the technology in place, we need to make sure we manage these sustainable innovations so that we optimise their environmental benefits.

Currently, bio-based plastics aren’t that big and represent only about 1% of the plastics market. However, there is investment by the European Commission, in a joint project with Bio-Based Industries (BBI), of 3.7 billion Euros to increase the production of bio-based raw materials. So bio-based plastics are soon become more present on the market – but is Denmark ready for them?

Working together to create change

We need to look both at the production of these plastics, as well as how they are handled, if we want to transition to a circular economy. Which is why my thesis topic is attempting to look at both of these aspects. Over the past few months, I have been conducting interviews with different stakeholders – people in policymaking, the plastic industry, waste management, and non-governmental organisations – about system-level strategies for bio-based plastic, in order to assess the readiness level of Denmark for the emergence of this material. Next, I’ll be conduct a citizen survey to better understand consumers’ perception of bio-based plastic. I’ll also be examining the production of a specific bio-based plastic that is an alternative to the widely used polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The intention behind this project is to contribute to the transition to a more circular economy in Denmark, and I’ll be sharing the results of the project in a few months’ time.

References

1. The PEW Charitable Trusts and SYSTEMIQ “Breaking the Plastic Wave” (2018) 

2. McKinsey & Company “New Plastics Economy: A research, innovation and business opportunity for Denmark” (2019)

Megan Roux is a Master student of Sustainable Biotechnology, Aalborg University Copenhagen.

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Megan Roux

Multidisciplinary collaboration to secure the future of water in Cape Town

Megan Roux — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 10:58:53 +0000

Although written over fifty years ago, Frank Herbert’s great sci-fi novel Dune seems a prescient piece of literature about the necessity of learning to live with the Earth, not just on it. The inhabitants of Dune’s desert planet Arrakis have a certain reverence for water, and for the planet’s ecology, that we can all learn from. Reading Dune on the canals of Copenhagen on a sunny August day, it is hard to imagine the waterless world Herbert describes. However, a few years ago, as I was finishing my Bachelor’s degree at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa, the threat of an urban drought was all too real.

In 2018, the City of Cape Town declared a city-wide water crisis, which would be punctuated by ‘Day Zero’ – the day the city would run out of water. The drought had been looming for years, and the City of Cape Town had made some management changes, but all rested on the assumption that rain would fall at the same rate as in the past. This proved to be a big mistake and a lesson for us all in the effects of climate change. As the threat of severe drought came closer, citizens were urged to use less water – at most 50 litres a day, which, at ‘Day Zero’ would be even further reduced to 25 litres a day and distributed to people via emergency water stations. In the beginning, we simply had to change our behaviour to fit the limits that the municipality imposed on us. But inevitably we became more conscious of the way we use water. Why do we take such long showers, and then not use any of that water again to flush the toilet, or to water the plants outside?

We began to understand (and be frightened by) the prospect of running out of a substance essential to life. And like the characters in Dune, we became more aware of the value of this finite resource. In the end, Cape Town was relieved of the pressure of drought due to some much welcomed rain. I would like to think that the water crisis changed our understanding of the precariousness of our ecosystem, but I have the suspicion that it will take a lot more for a lasting change in water consumption behaviour.

To better understand the current Cape Town water situation, I spoke to Dr Kevin Winter, a professor at UCT’s Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences (EGS). Kevin became involved in water research after completing his PhD in water science and management. The “golden thread” of his career, as he puts it, “has always been about monitoring, about generating data, about trying to understand patterns and trends”. Kevin’s work has taken him into many different areas, as a result of the multidisciplinary nature of the EGS department. And it’s this cross-sector collaboration that he enjoys about the work.

“I believe the kinds of questions that we’re asking in water science at the moment could not come from engineers’ mouths alone any longer,” he tells me. “What you have to try and work at right now is changing behaviour, and 70-90% of our problems are how to deal with people in their social contexts. I think that’s why it’s quite important to be working in these transdisciplinary environments right now, because the questions are different.”

To try and solve the water management challenges in South Africa, Kevin helped set up Future Water: a water research organisation based at UCT. “We’ve got a core group of academics from health sciences, economics, and law, and humanities and sciences and engineering,” Kevin tells me. And he goes on to explain that there is more to it than just getting a group of people from different disciplines together:

“I think probably the most exciting thing for me is… where do you find your place in all of this? Even if you have [the] opportunity to set up an institute like that, you need to make sure you’ve got a project that begins to bring people’s minds together. So I think what I was looking for was ‘where do I find a site where I can bring different disciplines together?’ Which is how the whole Water Hub started in Franschhoek.”

The Water Hub

The Water Hub is a research and skills development centre as well as a recreation destination. The vision of the site is one where the conference centre, exhibition space and research labs are integrated with the surrounding nature. It is located at an abandoned wastewater treatment plant in Franschhoek, in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The plant was never fully decommissioned, and now serves as what Kevin calls an “urban living lab”. At the site, the focus is on the food-energy-water and waste nexus. “We don’t bring anything else in. We don’t add any more chemicals. We try to clean things the way nature would clean water,” Kevin tells me.

One of the projects at the Water Hub is a biofiltration system intended to biologically treat runoff water from an informal settlement and to make this water available for crop irrigation by the settlement. “What we’ve got really is a reconstructed wetland,” Kevin says. “We’ve taken the design from nature in that sense, and now we are learning what level and quantity and flow is required for the water to retain the anaerobic habitat with a diversity of microbes that are sitting quite deep down in these very large filters.”

Kevin describes the basic setup of the system, which comprises six parallel biofilter cells. Two are filled with large stones (one vegetated and one not), two filled with peach pips that serve as a carbon source for the microbes, and two with smaller stones. The polluted water, which contains among other contaminants Escherichia coli, high levels of ammonia and phosphate, as well as antiretroviral medication used to treat HIV, is passed through these filters and then tested. The water, which still contains some nutrients, is then used as a liquid fertiliser for crop irrigation. Having successfully grown some crops in permaculture gardens at the Water Hub, the next step is to “start rolling out larger gardens and making a food haven there,” which Kevin tells me “will involve 4 or 5 people from the informal settlement” to grow the food, thus involving the community in the project.

So far, the filters have done well with the E. coli; removing almost all of it from the system, and with the nutrients; reducing ammonia and phosphate levels by 90-95%. The large rough stone (19-25 mm in diameter) filters have worked the best. Some of the problems that still remain are high levels of potassium and salt in the water. For these, the team is testing out the use of biochar filters and duckweed.

A current student at UCT, Rowyn Naidoo, took on the task of trying to incorporate biomimicry, or nature-inspired design, into this project. For one, the biofilter setup itself acts as a kind of ‘reconstructed wetland’; slowing down the water flow so that contaminants can settle, and microbes can act on the polluted stream and outcompete undesirable bacteria like E. coli. As a second nod to biomimicry, Rowyn looked to termite colonies for inspiration. Termite colonies are designed in mounds that promote air flow and soil mixing. This very design can be used in the crop irrigation system for more efficient water distribution.

The next steps for the Water Hub will be to track how much of the chemicals are making their way into the crops. Kevin tells me that current research estimates “about 90% of the chemicals are being trapped within these biofilters, either through bacteria, or actually as a particle, but they are being held within that process,” which is good news. Before anything can fully go forward, the Water Hub wants to get the research right. “Demonstrating a sustainable centre… and to get it to work is really important because that’s where inspiration comes from.”

The Cape Town water situation today

Having not been in South Africa for over a year now, I was curious about the current water situation in Cape Town. Have people forgotten about being water-wise, and reverted back to old habits? Has the Covid-19 pandemic changed behaviour? Kevin’s response was positive; “for the moment, I think the behaviour is quite well sustained,” he says. However, the pandemic hasn’t made things easier. Kevin informs me that it has posed several challenges to water monitoring, as water meter officials cannot always go out and do their jobs. As a result, many households are given estimated water-use values, so they don’t really know what they’re using. This approach isn’t going to make people conscious of their water use, which is something Kevin thinks is essential to the future of water management.

Kevin says he’s “really interested [to see how] during Covid people have been behaving differently. And that data is really difficult to get at now because there’s a large majority of households that have just been given estimate values.” One of the future solutions Kevin and I touched on is the idea of using artificial intelligence to track water use. This is one among many projects that the City of Cape Town is looking into with regards to water management.

Looking to the future

In addition to ensuring citizen consciousness about water use, avoiding another water crisis comes down to diversifying water sources, reliable data tracking, and investigating water recirculation. As Kevin tells me, “we’ve got more than enough water that falls, we’ve just got to use it properly”.

The characters in Dune wear suits that clean and recirculate water expelled from the body for drinking, and they only move around at night to avoid the sun’s dehydrating effects and save what precious water they have. These actions seem extreme, and they are, but if we don’t want to have to turn to extreme measures then perhaps we need a more urgent focus on the way we use water. A space like the Water Hub, where minds from different backgrounds can come together, seems like a good place to start.

Megan Roux is a Master student of Sustainable Biotechnology, Aalborg University Copenhagen.

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Kevin Winter

MUCED: Personal development, educational development at universities and practical environmental development in the Malaysian society

Berit Viuf — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 11:34:23 +0000

One of the first Malaysian students to benefit from the MUCED programme was professor Suhaimi Abdul Talib. In 2001 he went to Denmark to work on his Ph.D. project Anoxic transformations of wastewater organic matter in sewers – process kinetics, model concept and wastewater treatment potential. During two periods of three months, he had his day-to-day work in the laboratories of Institute of Environmental Engineering at Aalborg University.

Now, almost 20 years later, it is his strong belief, that the time in Denmark has paid off.

“The impact of the DUCED-MUCED programme was quite successful, I think. It had impact on the receiving countries in terms of capacity building. I think it helped me a lot to be exposed to this programme, not so much the technical Ph.D. guidance but by making a Danish network accessible,” Suhaimi Talib says.

It was not the first time, that he went abroad. He had studied in Australia and got his master in the UK. But meeting his Danish supervisor, biochemical engineer Thorkild Hvidfeldt-Jacobsen, who at the time was well-known for his work on processes in water management, opened new doors and new paradigms in water waste management for the Malaysian student.

Later on, Suhaimi Talib’s own students would also benefit, as they too could dig into his international network and contact foreign experts to share problems and solutions in the wastewater management field.

Personal benefits rubs off on society

When asked Suhaimi Talib sees the benefit in various ways, both directly and indirectly.

Firstly, it helped him personally in his career. Getting international experience made him confident to set up new networks and to bid for bigger projects. After achieving a position as professor at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, UiTM (Universiti Teknologi Mara), in 2004, he was appointed dean of the faculty, and later on deputy vice-chancellor at UiTM.

Secondly, he got access to European network, which made him start new initiatives in his home country. Inspired by the European Junior Scientific Workshop, where master and Ph.D. students gather to discuss their work, he helped organize the first Asian Junior Scientist Workshop in Malacca (Malaysia).

“We had students coming from all over: Germany, from Spain, from Denmark and from Japan to join that workshop,” he tells, and highlights that the AJSW is still going on every year to this day.

Thirdly, he was introduced to Problem-Based Learning at Aalborg University, and this teaching method he brought back home.

“In Denmark I was not only looking at my research, I was also looking at how they conducted the classes. They were using this concept of PBL, and I picked that up, and that has somehow influenced my teaching as well. So my teaching has moved from having a main aim of content delivery, into content delivery due to more practical exposure,” he explains.

When he was appointed as dean at the faculty, he could emphasize teaching methods even more.

“UiTM is a teaching university, yet our promotion criteria is based on the same criteria as research universities. You’ve got to write papers. So the changes that I made was in the teaching track. If they (lecturers) can come up with innovated assessments or innovated delivering methods, that is equivalent to a scientific paper, provided that they document it and publish it in a journal,” he explains.

Influence on Malaysian sewage system

Furthermore, the DUCED-MUCED network indirectly helped to speed up a paradigm change in Malaysian sewage engineering.

A remarkable result of his Ph.D. project was, when he discovered, that the denitrification process was not as simple as assumed. A paper from 1940’s had described how nitrate in wastewater is broken directly to nitrogen when exposed to certain bacteria, and this knowledge formed the base for wastewater treatment plants at the time. But in his research, Suhaimi Talib found, that the nitrate does not break down completely. It goes through a cycle where nitrate is broken down to nitrite, and then the nitrite breaks down to nitrogen.

For the uninitiated this may sound like a detail. But the cycle has great impact on how waste water engineers build their models for the treatment plants and sewage systems. In its essence, the treatment of wastewater start in the kitchen sink, and is vulnerable to the process during the transportation from household, to treatment plant and back to nature.

The bioprocesses of the local chemical composition and temperature is simply crucial for the efficiency of the treatment, so the more knowledge about the exact biological decomposing inside the pipes, the treatment plant and in the surrounding nature the better.

Knowledge like this was not only beneficial internationally but has also made an impact in Malaysia. Suhaimi Talib and his advisor Zaini Ujang from the University of Technology, Malaysia, have during their careers both been involved with IWK, Malaysia’s national sewage company, giving advice on the development of sewage systems in Malaysia. This helped changing the mindset of how to look at wastewater management.

“It changed from design based on physical parameters like slow gradient velocity and retention time into looking at a better understanding of the microbiology and biochemistry in the processes,” Suhaimi Talib explains.

Did not want to be a shadow

It was a coincidence that Suhaimi Talib became an engineer. But it was no random choice to specialize in sewage systems.

“When I looked at the faculty and, in the water and wastewater department, there were already professors in area of the waste water engineering, and they were focusing their research on the treatment in the treatment plant. So, if I went into that area, I would forever be a shadow, until I retired. So that’s when I decided that I had to do something different,” he tells.

So, he started looking into the transport of wastewater and came across the work of Hvidfeldt-Jacobsens and his group. He noticed that not many people in the world was looking at sewage as a bioreactor, and by that he had found his area.

“In terms of knowledge, it is the same as that in the treatment plant, but the parameters are different. So, I found that interesting, and after discussing with Zaini Ujang, we decided that it would be a good area to pursue,” he explains.

Capacity building is about the right topics at the right time

By that he has come to a key point, when discussing capacity building. When doing programmes with the aim of encouraging research that can be beneficial to local societies, it is important to pick staff and students with motivation for change and to select topics that will have a real impact. And this relies on the supervisors.

“Zaini Ujang knew the value of collaboration, and he picked me to do it. Now I know the value of the collaboration. If I want to recommend something, I will know how to pick a good candidate to go on this sort of collaboration,” Suhaimi Talib states.

Berit Viuf is a Danish science journalist; the interview was conducted during a reporting trip to Malaysia and Thailand

Female scientist fighting for her place studying climate change in Ecuador

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 09:24:17 +0000

Meet the Ecuadorian scientist who defied machismo-culture in the academic world in Ecuador, to study thoroughly a big passion for her – climate change and its effects on her native mountain region and in the end the water supply in the country.

The impressive glacier of Antisana (5.758 meters) rests just above the temperature chambers, that represents some of the climate change field study-work for Priscilla Muriel (44), Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. In this remote mountain region, in the national park around the volcano Antisana, Priscilla and her colleagues study how rising temperatures affects the highland ecosystem in the Andes – on the soil, the plants and as a community of plants.

The site is one of the so-called Gloria sites in Ecuador, which are also found around the volcanos El Altar and Pichincha. In total there are 21 Gloria-spots in Latin America from Venezuela to Argentina, and they are part of the global observation research initiative in alpine environments.

The Ecuadorian biologist got her Ph.D. in Biology at Aarhus University with support from the ENRECA program. She forms part of a group of female scientists at her university in Ecuador.

Even though she belongs to the younger parts of the scientists, as a woman she has had many challenges related to her sex.

“You’re here at the university just to find a husband, a professor told me once – as all the other women,” remembers Priscilla with a serious smile.

She tells how the first years of her career she spent behind the desk more doing a kind of analyzing others field work. “It was my perception and I was suggested to do deskwork – because field studies were not for women,” Priscilla explains.

Her personal fight and experiences have also made Priscilla passionate about supporting other women in science. “Otherwise imagine all the knowledge that gets lost. And all those female scientists not being able to realize important work,” states Priscilla.

Back at Antisana national park at high above sea level and with a humid and cold climate, the scientist is showing some boxes 2×2 meters that simulates how 2 degrees warming would affect the environment.

“When the temperature rises, some of the original plants from the páramo ecosystem die out and make space for species from lower altitudes, even for invasive species. And these are a lot stronger and more aggressive. In general, those ones outcompete the native plants. In Ecuador this phenomenon hasn’t really been studied, we are still in diapers. But from other parts of the world we know, that in those small niches, open spaces, if there is an invasive plant, the probability that a native plant will germinate, is very low. Then in some years, you will find a community of plants that doesn’t look like the original one at all. And the ecosystem will not have the same features that allow CO2 capture or water storage – it’s like a snowball”.

Also, when the páramo plants die back and invasive species get in, suddenly you no longer have the same food for animals (pollinators, native herbivores). It’s a problem with some invasive species, that they are not very palatable for animals that eats small plants. Furthermore, you do not have the same resource for insects or birds who live in the here and acts as pollinators or seed dispersers for páramos species for crops further down the mountain.

“The páramo and its community of plants is like a super developed network that we just know a tiny bit about”.

The páramo ecosystems are often referred to as water factories, and important for the supply of drinking water. Antisana is no exception. This particular area is essential to ensure water supplies for the Ecuadorian capital, Quito. “And we don’t understand very well what’s happening here with the rising temperatures and this is really serious,” warns Priscilla.

“That’s what motivates me. The plants of the high Andes – that don’t exist elsewhere. If we don’t act, so that those plants won’t disappear, those species are condemned. Rising temperatures causes the plants to migrate higher up – but those plants can’t any higher here, because they are already near the top of the mountains.”

But as a scientist specialized in climate change, it is also an ever-existing challenge understanding the seriousness of the situation without losing hope or suffering psychological consequences of that knowledge.

“It’s a beautiful work, but very slow and distressing from the point of view that you only have little pieces of a puzzle that you are just starting to discover, and then you have to try to explain what is happening to other people, specially to the decisionmakers. Generally, they do not follow you very well. And they don’t give it the relevance they should,” says Priscilla.

As the global temperature rises the plants that are exclusive for the highlands migrate up the mountain. Those páramo plants have special characteristics, such as the ability of retaining water and therefore have a central role in the clean water “production” in Andean countries such as Ecuador, Colombia etc.

“The problem is that here in the páramos, we have a super delicate balance of plants like cushion-plants and grasslands. In our study sites, what we do is to register everything! From every new plant that has arrived, to the plants we can see have disappeared, because that will give you an idea of how the community has changed and gives you an idea if the community is losing properties such as water retention”.

Priscilla is especially interested in studying climate change effects on the unique plant species in the in the Andean highlands, which urgently requires studies. And in order to get a more integral view of its consequences of climate change on the plants in the high Andes.

As a part of their studies about climate change, Priscilla and her team also register the temperature in the soil every hour. And they have been doing so for six years.

“Here in the Andes you have a lot of people who depend on the mountains for everything. Quito is the clear example with respect to water. Actually, a lot of food that we eat, is cultivated in the highlands. At the crop level, not many studies have been done – there are studies in cocoa, there are studies in potatoes, but basically all the crops from the Andean areas are poorly studied, and eventually they will have problems due to climate change,” explains Priscilla.

Priscilla has a 5 years old daughter. As a parent, it’s also hard to continue with the fieldwork and travels. But at the same time, her daughter’s future motivates Priscilla to keep investigating this important topic:

“I want my daughter to be able to enjoy and visit the same places as I have,” says Priscilla.

Lise Josefsen Hermann is a Danish journalist based in Ecuador

Photo: Esteban Barrera

References

Cuesta, Francisco, Luis Llambí, Christian Huggel, Fabian Drenkhan, William Gosling, Priscilla Muriel, Ricardo Jaramillo Terán, and Carolina Tovar Ingar. 2019. “New Land in the Neotropics: A Review of Biotic Community, Ecosystem and Landscape Transformations in the Face of Climate and Glacier Change.” Regional Environmental Change, May, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01499-3.

Cuesta, Francisco, Carolina Tovar Ingar, Luis Llambí, William, William Gosling, Stephan Halloy, Julieta Carilla, et al. 2020. “Thermal Niche Traits of High Alpine Plant Species and Communities across the Tropical Andes and Their Vulnerability to Global Warming.” Journal of Biogeography 47 (January): 408–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13759.