37º IAHS World Congress on Housing: - Universidad de Cantabria

XXXVII <strong>IAHS</strong><strong>World</strong> <strong>Congress</strong> on HousingOctober 26 – 29, 2010, Santander, SpainCODE: 613BASED ON MBFR (MEMBRANE BIOFILM REACTOR) FORSEWAGE REUSER. Díez, L. Rodríguez, L. De Florio, A. L. Esteban, I. TejeroEnvironmental Engineering GroupDepartment of Water and Environment Science and TechnologyUniversity of Cantabria, Spaine-mail: tejeroi@unican.esKey words: ecological sanitation, sewer mining, water reuse, decentralized wastewater treatment,onsite treatment, membrane bioreactor, biofilm reactorAbstractEcological sanitation, also known as Ecosan, is a sanitation concept based on the systematicimplementation of reuse and recycling of nutrients and water as an alternative to conventionalsanitation solutions. The objective is to offer economically and ecologically sustainablesystems that aim at closing the natural nutrients and water cycle for the benefit of agriculture,helping to preserve soil fertility while minimizing water pollution. Ecosan offers a variety ofoptions, where centralized elements can be combined with decentralized ones ranging fromwaterborne to dry sanitation, from high-tech to low-tech, etc. By considering a much largerrange of options, optimal solutions can be developed for each particular situation. Sewermining has been described as the process of tapping into a sewer and extracting sewage,which is then treated and used as recycled water for urban, agricultural, industrial,recreational or environmental use. Onsite treatment and recycling of sewage can avoid theexpenses related to reuse facilities such as transport pipelines, storage tanks and recycledwater pumps when compared to centralized system. On the other hand such treatment must becompact and simple. The membrane biofilm reactor (MBfR), an innovative process patented[1] by the Environmental Engineering Group of the University of Cantabria, gathers thesuitable characteristics for the purposes indicated because it can treat simply pretreated rawwastewater without the need of previous settler, obtaining in a single process COD, BOD5and TN removal efficiencies of 90%, 96% and 75% respectively and meeting Spanish,European and EPA (USA) reuse legislations. This article describes ecological sanitation andsewer mining principles, as a decentralized sanitation alternative versus conventionalsanitation, and shows the MBfR as a treatment fit for the reuse of water and nutrientsaccording to such principles. Finally an example of practical application is shown.37º <strong>IAHS</strong> <strong>World</strong> <strong>Congress</strong> On Housing Science 242