Advances in Water Treatment and Enviromental Management

162 WATER TREATMENTA last point of potential development is the system where membranes are included.Membranes are too often studied independently. They are essential, but only smallcomponent of an overall system which leaves considerable room for improvement.The “system” approach will likely result in great progress.AUTOMATIONArtificial intelligence but also other forms of computer architecture such as inparticular neural networks, will bring tremendous changes to all forms of watertreatment technologies. They will constitute powerful tools capable of handling at afantastic speed fuzzy data and more than anything capable of automatic learning.They may bring back to life obsolete technologies and will drastically boost thedevelopment of the most sophisticated ones. It seems that all water plants will beequipped in the course of the next decade with some form of these knowledgebased systems. In parallel the development of new sensors using miniatureelectronics technology will be accelerated.THE WASTEWATER AREAThe wastewater area includes primarily the development of new biological processes.It is indeed an arbitrary simplification, since a lot of the industrial wastewatertreatments are primarily physical-chemical in nature and their evolution will besimilar to that identified above. The main trends in the biological treatments, however,can be summarized as follows:• A gradual change from activated sludge to biofilters.• A pressure to develop anaerobic treatment in areas where energy cost ishigh (Europe, Japan,…).• The reinforcement of phosphorus and nitrogen removal.• The development of combined physical-chemical and biological treatments.In this latter case we can see the potential and the probable emergence of thecombination of biological treatments with membrane separation where they will beused to develop fully integrated membrane bioreactors. Progressively membraneswill be applied in the place of secondary clarifiers. This is already taking place inthe “building-plants” in Japan (recycling of municipal waste water, and in specificindustrial waster water applications, requiring a high degree of reliability). Ultimatelymembranes (loose microfiltration) will move also to replace the primary clarifiersand will end up in making possible the development of bioreactors confined andhighly specific. This may seem a little futuristic but again under the pressure of thetechnology development and the large international research programs, thesereactors may be commonly used well before the turn of the century. They will bringabout: compactness higher yields, reliability, easiness in operation, low sludgeproduction and altogether a much better quality water.CONCLUSIONAfter many years of conservation, the change in water technology has now startedand will probably develop exponentially. The world itself is changing and newchallenges will emerge in the coming decade which will in turn require even newertechnologies. In this universe of moving targets there are some certainties: thequest for a better quality water is undoubtedly one and membranes, because oftheir reliability in this aspect and also because of their evolutionary nature, representour best hope to deal with this future.