There has been a lot in the news recently about reusing and recycling water in an attempt to combat the global water shortages, and this has resulted in some people getting their back up and stating that they do not want to be drinking water today that was sewage last week, and I suppose one cannot really blame them.
What has actually happened is that many sources have not really explained the terminology reuse or repurpose water… and this is where fit-for-purpose water comes in.
What is Fit for Purpose Water?
We use water for various purposes such as drinking water, water for personal hygiene, and water for cooking, which constitute direct human consumption or contact. Water is also used for laundry, toilet flushing, cooling, and green space irrigation, none of which result in direct contact or ingestion. Then there is also water that is utilised for industrial use, which includes cleaning, food preparation, and cooling.
Fit-for-Purpose water simply means matching water of a certain quality to use that is appropriate to that quality of water.
The reuse of water means treating water that has previously been used to a quality that is acceptable for the intended reuse while posing the minimum risk to the user. An example of this is water that is treated for reuse in irrigation of specific agriculture, toilet flushing, cement making, fire flow testing, household landscapes, and laundry for instance. This treated water is treated to a quality that is much less than that required of drinking water while still remaining completely safe.
When technology is manipulated to treat water to specific quality endpoints, the end result is known as “fit-for-purpose†(FfP) reuse. The reason why this technology is being used to make FfP water is mainly due to the astronomical cost of treating water to a quality that is acceptable as drinking water only then to have it used for watering the garden or flushing the toilet.
Current technologies are also not viable due to their significant energy and environmental footprint, so it seems that ‘fit for purpose water’ is a good idea, where authorities supply consumers with two different qualities of water; one to be used as drinking water and the other to be used for flushing toilets, washing clothes and other uses that do not call for drinking water quality.
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