Developing Low Energy Photo-based Water and Wastewater Treatment Technologies

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The focus of this research program is the development of energy efficient water and wastewater treatment technologies that are scalable, have a small carbon footprint and can be applicable in remote locations in Canada as well as in developing countries. A decrease in fresh water availability, ever-increasing population and strong link between non-renewable energy and climate change highlight the need for energy efficient technologies. Amongst evolving technologies, advanced oxidative processes (AOPs) hold significant promise. While successful application of AOPs has been demonstrated to effectively degrade many contaminants, at its current state of art, AOPs are quite energy intensive. However, this can change if we can harness sunlight/visible light to photo catalytically treat contaminants and advance it to a deployable technology. The technologies to be developed through this program form the basis of Smart Water Technologies that can be applied for both small and large scale water and waste water treatment. They can be used to treat drinking water and reclaim water for reuse. They will (a) provide disinfection as well as (b) treat emerging contaminants (pharmaceuticals, personal care products, pesticides, household chemicals and others) being continually released through treated wastewaters and runoff into our water bodies. In addition, these can be utilised for passive treatment of industrial waters stored in ponds. To this end, the research focus is on harnessing renewable energy sources such as sunlight and visible light as well as low energy light emitting diodes (LEDs). The proposed research has five specific objectives (O), with O1&O2 focusing on the development of visible light active materials and their composites and evaluating their performance to disinfect as well as treat emerging contaminants in water. In O3, we intend to exploit natural iron chemistry and integrate with solar energy to develop a passive treatment technology. This will have immediate application in industrial wastewaters stored in ponds. The later objectives (O4&O5) will synthesize the research findings of O1-O3 and focus on developing and testing solar mediated engineered treatment units to achieve disinfection and treatment of emerging contaminants. Successful evaluation at this stage will lead to a suite of technologies that utilise renewable energy such as visible light/sunlight or low energy LEDs for tertiary water and wastewater treatment. The technologies developed through this program will be scalable and have application in remote, small rural communities as well as in larger municipalities. We believe that the technologies developed through this program have the potential to be game changing in water/wastewater industry.