Advanced low quality waters treatment for unrestricted use purposes: imminent challenges

Various countries in the Mediterranean Basin and other arid and semi-arid regions are confronting water shortage issues. This gap between supply and demand is closely linked with agricultural production, environmental conditions, and climate changes. It is also probably due to reduced amounts of precipitation, decrease in natural groundwater recharge and low availability of natural water sources. Special ventures have to be undertaken in order to supply water at adequate quality for all utilization purposes. These can be accomplished by development of additional water sources that currently are considered marginal. The additional sources include saline ground water, treated wastewater and runoff water and sea water for desalination. The study presents reuse options of wastewater in conjunction with minimizing water supply dependence on other high quality water sources. Domestic secondary effluent is a valuable water source for reclamation, however, extra treatment is required to reuse it for unrestricted purposes. It can be achieved primarily by implementation of the membrane technology, namely ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO) stages. Field results revealed that membrane technology is essential for sustainable production. However, additional work has to be carried out in order to improve the membrane performance and efficacy.