ENERGY MANAGEMENT & SUSTAINABILITY
IT’S CYCLICAL
Steve Teasdale, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor at InnuScience Group, analyses the impact of the water cycle on us and the role Justified Disinfection can play in ensuring water composition remains undisturbed.
Consider the current situation globally. We live in a world overwhelmed by the changes that COVID has brought upon us. The immediate reaction is to kill the virus from every surface, using all manner of disinfectant solutions. First though, we should consider the impact these disinfectants have on water quality.
Let’s start by looking at the cycle of what we are using when we are cleaning or disinfecting. Remember the disinfectant doesn’t simply vanish. As the disinfectant is applied, a part is used in the disinfection process itself. A part will remain on the surface. Dependant on the product, part will evaporate into the air. The majority will be rinsed down the drain or disposed of as excess solution into the sewage system.
So, the remaining disinfectant solution goes into the sewage system. Yet it’s not ‘gone’. Once in the sewage system, the solution goes through the necessary wastewater treatment processes. However, it eventually ends up back in the environment; our rivers, and lakes and finally back into our drinking water, or the water we use to make cleaning products and disinfectants with. Therefore, it really is a cycle.
Most communities have wastewater treatment plants. There are two principle types of wastewater treatment
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plants. The biological system type and the chemical physical system. Chemical physical systems do not biodegrade anything relying on a simple process of flocculation, the sedimentation of solid particles.
They are not especially good systems, but they still exist. What we call biological wastewater treatment plants work basically as bio reactors. These are aerated ponds where a high concentration of microbial biomass feeds on any type of substance that arrives in the wastewater. The ultimate goal is to biodegrade the organic matter and the chemicals that are entering the treatment process.
Consider the variety of materials that are found in the wastewater entering a local treatment plant. Residential and manufacturing waste, hospitality, and medical waste. Most are biodegradable such as urine, faeces, food residues coming from dishwashing machines, water from the showers and from toilets.
However, not everything is biodegradable as we have substances that are slow to biodegrade, or which are non- biodegradable. These products may be altered in some fashion or not, but they still end up in the natural water system. This is the case of many antibiotics and is the case of many disinfectants and many other chemicals.
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