Urbanisation is in full swing in Asia, and with it comes the problems of providing sufficient water for all, but researchers are adapting a comprehensive water management idea previously successfully applied in Germany.
Until now, Da Nang’s wastewater often flowed untreated into leaky ditches, which was rather unhygienic and left many beaches contaminated. Researchers are however rapidly changing this state of affairs as they develop an idea for reducing water use, treating wastewater and extracting fertiliser for a piece of coastline in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang.
Innovative solutions are called for to feed the increasing population, to supply water and energy, as well as to recycle waste wherever possible. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart have adapted a wastewater treatment concept for use in Vietnam.
The “Integrated Resource Management in Asian Cities: The Urban Nexus” project will implement the innovative infrastructure that they have adapted from the DEUS 21 project, under the auspices of the German Society for International Cooperation GmbH (GIZ), along a strip of coastal land with some 200,000 residents in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang.
Soon the 110 plots in the area, which house approximately 500 individuals, will be connected to a ground-breaking sewage network consisting of vacuum pipes that are significantly smaller in diameter than standard pipes. This process allows pumps to extract wastewater in a similar process to that utilised on planes and trains.
This new process will allow wastewater to be processed with hotel kitchen waste, which will produce a biogas that will be used for cooking in the kitchens of those same hotels. The treated water will be used by farmers, saving on groundwater use for agriculture, leaving more fresh water for drinking water and nutrients found in the processed wastewater will be used as a natural fertiliser.
According to Dr Marius Mohr from the IGB, the system has achieved excellent results, with the solution producing twice as much biogas as it did with traditional water treatment plants in Germany. This makes the system unique and suitable to be implemented in various regions, particularly where there is currently no sewer system or sewage treatment.
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