The city of Bengaluru in South india has a population of 10 million. It is supplied with 1400 million litres of water every day from a river called the Cauvery. It is estimated that about 1100 million litres of waste water is generated every day which needs to be collected and treated. The city has three major valleys through which the storm-water and now the waste-waters flow. The water utility called the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board BWSSB has set up 14 sewage treatment plants and is in the process of setting up an additional 11 sewage treatment plants to treat all the 1100 miliion litres of waste-water generated. one such small plant is located at a lake called Jakkur in the North of the city. This is designed as an Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) with an anoxic tank and Extended Aeration system to treat 10 million litres of sewage per day. The system then releases the treated waste-water to a constructed wetland where it is polished and the enters a 50 hectare lake. The lake is always full throughout the year and recharges the shallow groundwater aquifer to the extant of 7 million litres per day. Fish is also reared in the lake and a daily average harvest of 100 kilogrammes of fish is collected by fishermen. The lake is full of birds including the weaver bird, cormorants, pied kingfisher and pelicans. In an interesting way using ecosystem services waste-water is used to enhance bio-diversity , fill a lake , recharge aquifers and provide drinking water through the shallow and deep bore-wells nearby. More details and photographs in the attached Facebook post www.facebook.com/zenrainman/media_set?se...4&type=3&pnref=story

I guess it is difficult to explain a large country in India in simple terms .*

1. What did you mean by: "these are the best of times and the worst of times for waste-water in Bengaluru"?

This is a quote from a famous English novel describing the early days of the French revolution.

2. Is there any talk in your city about reducing the amount of wastewater generated? E.g. via reduction of water use (demand management)?

The city is constrained for the supply of water which stands at about 80 lpcd right now. There is no question of reducing demand any further for the moment.

3. What fraction of the 10 mio people are connected to the sewer system presently and will the connection rate be rapidly expanded?

About 70 % of the people would be connected to underground sewerage system.

4. Would people really drink the treated wastewater in that appartment building, and which treatment process is being used there? Must be something with membrane filtration? But in any case people don't tend to drink tap water in Indian cities but drink only bottled water, I thought? (my husband recently had an Indian water engineer visiting here in Germany and it took him about 20 minutes to convince him that drinking from the tap in Germany is safe...)

People are already drinking the treated waste-water after blending it with fresh water . People do tend to drink tap water in India , depends on which city you are from . In my city Bengaluru tap water is absolutely safe to drink, for an Indian.

5. When you are saying "One experiment we are assisting in is to use treated waste-water for artificial recharge of the shallow aquifer.", then who is "we"?

We is my NGO Biome Trust and a resident society with 360 plots / households called Rainbow Drive in close discussion withe State Pollution Control Board.

6. Are you agreeing with this trend of building more and more large treatment plants or would you argue for other alternatives? Like those decentralised treatment plants, would you say they are inherently better or it depends? (I guess dry toilets are out of the question for a densely populated city like this one)

There is always a combination which would be reality. Is a 10 million litres per day plant large ? in the context of 1500 millions of waste-water being needed to be treated? In Bengaluru there will be 25 large treatement plants (MEASURED IN MLD) and about 6000 small treatment plants (measured in KLD)

Finally it is Bengaluru now not Bangalore.


++++++++++

* Note by moderator: The sentences in italics were the questions raised by Elisabeth in this post on 26 May (scrol up in the thread):
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/165-ce...le-alternative#13440

Dear all,

All few observations from my side.

1.) In the context of India, or any other nation with a large Hindu population, I think it would be very difficult to set up a functioning system which requires handling of semi-fresh human wastes. To many of the poor unemployed who may be compelled to work in this sector it would probably feel like a time machine going backwards.

2.) I think the model where the contractor takes on at least 10 years of O&M after building a waste treatment system is a very sensible one. Of course, one still needs to guarantee that the client has sufficient income (tax revenue) to keep paying for the service all this time.

3.) I think the best "non-classical" solution that could be made to work for dense cities in the near future would be a system separation of urine, grey-water and black water. With different treatment systems on different scales. For example, the scale of large buildings or sections of streets for grey water and urine and something more like traditional WWTPs for the black-water. If the WWTPs are designed correctly, surprisingly high levels of energy and resource recovery are possible.

4.) I think that pioneering new sanitation solutions for formal urban areas in the developing world is not realistic. People aspire to the standard set by the developed world. For me this means that we should try to have dry-sanitation towns or cities, with optimized recovery facilities, first in the developed world. I feel that until you have such examples (and evidence of voluntary take up by wider communities) it will be very hard to convince people and policy makers in the developing world to embrace such technologies.

Regards

Marijn

Dear all,

actually I missed this very interesting discussion up to now as I thought (from the title) it is about India – in reality it is about concepts for all non served sanitation areas. Although all of what I am writing here I wrote in other posts here and there, I would like to put it together a bit (I apologize to all who read Susana since a longer time for repetitions)

I am a classic wastewater treatment engineer in my daily work. Our company (Rotária do Brasil) in Brazil is making the living from activated sludge plants, wetlands, anaerobic treatment (UASB, BAFFLED reactor) and biogas projects. We do everything from design, to construction, Electric and Automation, plant operation, septic tank emptying (trucks), sludge treatment. The sizes vary from 10 pe. to 200.000 pe.

We worked a lot in Peru (Rotaria del Perú, today AKUT Perú) with UDDT (Elisabeth mentioned it in a post above) – working on implementation with public utilities since 2008 in order to get models going, where the public utility takes up the responsibility for non sewered areas (which offer the possibilities to implement dry sanitation).

So I know both sides (the classic wet and the dry) very well.

Kai – although I am totally with you on a view that – if we want we could do dry concepts – I had to learn over the years that “we” (seen as the majority of society) apparently do not share the view – or knowledge – or conviction about dry sanitation that we (you and me) have.

For the defense of those who are not convinced about dry sanitation – there are no large scale business models (business as in public utility business) implanted to prove the viability. I did the theoretical numbers to prove the viability of dry sanitation concepts already in 2007 (it is in the Susana library) and we (company) repeated the calcs for several situations, nevertheless no rollout up to now. We (Heike and me) have been in discussion with SEDAPAL since 2009 repeatedly to implement in an area dry sanitation with no results (they are open if a doner would be open – they think they can not “risk public money on the concept). Lima is the perfect place for this and there is a VERY high need for that. We (company) did lately focus groups for the World Bank with the users of UDDT in Lima, ALL of them said that this would be the solution for a larger scale. We tried to convince several times various donors, that with only 2-4 Mio U$ a prove of concept would be possible. Nothing! I don’t understand why – but it is as it is. Dry sanitation is not seen as the solution by us (the society).

To me it is clear that container solutions with fresh feces as proposed/used by X-runner or Soil really are no viable solution. All our ( company) calcs show that the costs for a frequent recollection (weekly) are way too high and the recollection of urine as proposed by Elisabeth is interesting may be in the future…when P has an adequate value, but right now not viable. I would have to look up the exact number, but from the head more than 50% of the monthly costs of a model we (company) developed for GIZ (which is in the video) are from the urine recollection.

I do see a really LARGE possibility for areas without sanitation to go for dry concepts, as the bathrooms have to be constructed as well and a storage for at least 6 month could easily be integrated (at least in our (company) bench designs)… but again those who agree with me are too few. And apparently non are donor organizations. BMFG is not concentrated in South America even though Lima could be a good example. Those who are there, still are not convinced.

But I see it very important to get definitions straight as Steve pointed out. Some talk of rural but mean settlements, which leads to a large difference in concept.

So closing this lengthy post I would like to propose the use of clear definitions. For me three definitions are clear:

A) Rural – lots of space between houses en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_area
B1) Densely populated areas –multi-story houses - absolutely no room, land is very scarce = valuable
B2) Densely populated areas – 1-2 story houses - absolutely no room, land is very scarce

Everything else is between A and B depending on the size of the town – city. There can be made many classifications, they are all overlapping.

Cheers
Christoph

P.S. Mughal – I don’t agree in using extended aeration for WWTP above 50.000 p.e (or even less). Too much energy, there should always be an anaerobic step (UASB or digester) if possible and a classic activated sludge process (5-10 days sludge age depending on the purpose). As well in order to get the possibility for energy production (viable in Brazil > 100.000 pe)

Dear Steve,

First off, many thanks for your informative post. That was my request and, I highly appreciate.

Yes, you are right – with rural areas I mean small towns. The choice of wastewater treatment systems in India seems to be similar to that of Pakistan. Here too, WSPs would be preferred in rural areas, and systems with extended aeration in urban areas.

In 1966, Dorr Oliver designed 2 large trickling filters plants in Karachi. Another foreign firm came in 1980s and converted them to primary treatment only.

Of interest is the point of O&M you mentioned, for India and Jordon. As you say, in India, you had to do O&M for 5-15 years – that is a very large O&M period!! In Jordon, there was none. You had to hand over the plant immediately after construction to the client n Jordon. These are two opposite perspectives.

I designed aerated lagoons wastewater treatment plant in Karachi in 1982. The contractor operated the plant for one year. That was the clause in the tender documents, and the contractors quoted their tendered amount accordingly.

Before I sign off, I have one small request: keep up writing those posts. Not only you write nicely (and in the process, you churn out useful information), your wife is desperate to increase the membership of this forum – - we can then have 5,001 members (if there are already 5,000 members)!!

Smiles,
F H Mughal

muench wrote: I don't know... Doesn't sound very appealing to me to have millions of lowly paid sanitation workers moving containers of excreta around a big city [...] - adding further to all the cities' traffic jams (and odors?) if nothing else. And for a country like India that is pulling itself out of poverty and slowly leaving "developing country" status behind, I don't think politicians would be thrilled to push for that option.

If you put it that way... but yet this is the way it is done everywhere when it comes to regular solid waste (if a solid waste disposal system exists).

I think for dry sanitation to succeed, it needs to hook into such existing and generally looked on favorable solutions. Urine based fertilizer production might then be a great way for municipalities to do some cost recovery on their solid waste disposal systems, similar to how it is done with land-fill gas for example.

To answer Mughal’s questions from 29 May in this thread (and in way of introduction: I am the mentioned husband of Elisabeth von Muench; I am a process engineer by training, currently working for a company (contractor) building wastewater treatment plants worldwide (www.passavant-ee.com); I was area manager for India for one year in 2014):

1. What types of wastewater treatment plants are preferred in the rural areas of India – activated sludge, trickling filters, aerated lagoons, anaerobic filters, waste stabilization ponds, etc?

What is your definition of rural here? I only have experience in urban India. If rural areas are quite dispersed then there is little point in building a sewer system and treatment plant, as it would not be cost effective. Or do you mean rural areas with small towns of say 100,000 people? I would say for rural areas with lots of space, the waste stabilization ponds are probably still the most common at present, but this is just my guess.

For the urban areas, we mostly build conventional activated sludge treatment plants and SBRs (sequencing batch reactors), a variant of the activated sludge process.

2. Is funding for the O&M (operation and maintenance) of the plants a problem, in rural areas in India?

From the viewpoint of a contractor, we are more and more seeing contracts where the company that has built the plant is also paid to do the O&M for 5-15 year periods (with the budget as set out during the tendering process). Where the funding for the O&M comes from, I am not totally sure but I would expect the same sources where the funding for the capital came from, i.e. from Indian tax revenue but also from JICA, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Worldbank.

In the past, the O&M was usually done by the municipality itself, not by the contractor. For example, in a recent project in Jordan where we built a treatment plant, it was done like that. After the plant was built and handed over, there were problems with the O&M being carried out by the wastewater treatment authority (client). In my opinion, the model of the contractor both building the plant and subsequently operating it for some years is usually a good one.

3. Are the plant’s components like aerators, screw pumps, sludge scrappers, large vertical non-clogging pumps, etc, etc, manufactured locally in India, or, are they imported?

These days, all this standard equipment is manufactured in India. Only specialized equipment is sometimes imported, like CHP units (combined heat and power units) or high efficiency blowers.

Regards,
Steve

My point is that OSS (on site sanitation) in the form of urine diverting dry toilets can be rolled out rapidly, takes very little municipal infrastructure - beyond perhaps installation privately of urine pipes that lead to centralized tanks (as in multifamily buildings) - and can be accomplished in a carbon-neutral fashion (relative to collection via IC* vehicles or installation of closed sewers and construction of inefficient (in terms of nutrient recover) and energy-intensive centralized wastewater treatment plants. One is unsustainable from both a resource and capital perspective and the other is resilient and potentially self-sustaining. Its just a matter of whether you subscribe to the reality that a low-energy future awaits us (and I mean "us" as in most of us that participate in this forum) or not.

And as far as India is concerned - its been a few years since I traveled through Rajasthan and Delhi, but it seems to me that OSS would be far superior to those areas that rely heavily on open sewers.

* 'IC' refers to internal combustion

I don't know... Doesn't sound very appealing to me to have millions of lowly paid sanitation workers moving containers of excreta around a big city with millions of oxen-drawn carts - adding further to all the cities' traffic jams (and odors?) if nothing else. And for a country like India that is pulling itself out of poverty and slowly leaving "developing coutry" status behind, I don't think politicians would be thrilled to push for that option.

Don't get me wrong, I do find container-based sanitation a perfectly valid option in the available mix of options. In areas where sewers are not possible, like certain slum areads, container-based sanitation might well be the best option. See also the other thread here where we are discussing it for low-income areas in Haiti: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/180-ur...nford-university-usa

and here:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/170-pu...business-model#13472

And I also do have my questions about all these new treatment plants in Bengaluru (still hoping that Vishwanath will address the questions that I raised above).
But I don't think the simplistic view that Bengaluru should build no treatment plants and go completey down the dry toilet route with a collection service makes is valid.

One thing that I do think could be worth exploring further is at least to keep the urine separate. One could envision urine tanks at appartment or street level (would need separate urine pipework) from where the urine is collected on a weekly basis (for example) and then put to good use; perhaps after some treatment to reduce its volume like the processes developed in the VUNA project (4 pages of discussion here: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/98-res...and-and-south-africa)
Again, the issue of transport costs might be a killer though as you'd have to transport the urine or the urine-derived fertilisers to the fields which are presumably moving further and further away from the city centre.

One thing I agree with you is that if there is a leapfrog opportunity here with regards to wastewater technology, it should be taken. I am just not too sure which part exactly can be leap frogged here.
Keep in mind also that even if everyone had dry toilets, you would still have to deal with all the greywater (I know it's easier to treat than domestic wastewater but still; I don't think you'd find enough space for constructed wetlands on the roof of each appartment building?).

Regards,
Elisabeth

Well, what's "realistic" is different for different people and places and times. But, as I write this, there are 40-some-odd million people in India that are jobless (and how many tens or hundreds of millions more that are under-employed?). ~40 million is the equivalent of half of Germany's population. So, setting aside caste issues and the prevalence of open defecation (neither to be taken lightly, mind you) there would appear to be plenty of workers to support a countrywide door-to-door collection scheme. Add-in water scarcity, a few million oxen (to pull a few million carts) and a recent history (and ongoing prevalence) of open sewers (therefore less aversion to poop) and I'd say there's the possibility to create the world's first large-scale decentralized/centralized carbon-neutral sanitation/fertilizer production project. Isn't this really just a matter of drive and will? We put people on the moon for crying out loud and that was 46 years ago! We can do anything we put our mind to.

Dear Elisabeth,

Lately, you have been referring to your husband’s expertise, off and on, in your posts. How about asking him to share his expertise directly with us, by write posts on this forum? I’m sure, Susana rules would allow that!!

Based on your last para above (Again drawing on the experience of my husband who was involved with building treatment plants in India) please convey my following queries to him (and please ask him to respond directly – we will love that, won’t you??!! ):

1. What types of wastewater treatment plants are preferred in the rural areas of India – activated sludge, trickling filters, aerated lagoons, anaerobic filters, waste stabilization ponds, etc?

2. Is funding for the O&M (operation and maintenance) of the plants a problem, in rural areas in India?

3. Are the plant’s components like aerators, screw pumps, sludge scrappers, large vertical non-clogging pumps, etc, etc, manufactured locally in India, or, are they imported?

Smiles

F H Mughal

Hi Kai,

I sort of know what you are getting at, but nevertheless which other realistic option - that has been tried and tested (i.e. not at research stage only) - can you envisage for a very densely populated city with 10 million people like Bengaluru? As much as I like urine-diverting dry toilets, even I would balk at the idea of installing them there. Same with constructed wetlands. The only alternative I can think of (in addition to reducing the amount of wastewater generated of course) are perhaps vacuum toilets and "high tech" decentralised treatment units in the basements of large appartment buildings. Which is why I asked Vishwanath the question about what technology is used in the appartment building example that he was talking about.

By the way, some of the research results coming out of the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge (RTTC) grants might be applicable to the case of Bengaluru, like perhaps the nano membrane toilet by Cranfield Uni or the hydrothermal carbonization unit by Loughborough Uni. Find them all here in the project database when filtered by technology "innovative science and technology":
www.susana.org/en/resources/projects?vbl...5D=&vbl_7%5B79%5D=79

But a lot of them are still far away from commercial application so one cannot expect Bangaluru City Council to wait for them.

Perhaps those new treatment plants that are being built are at least maximising energy recovery via biogas from sewage sludge and perhaps utilising the aerobic granulation process which seems to be a step forward for the activated sludge process - Nereda process (the Wikipedia page on this topic looks alright at first glance: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobic_granulation).

Would also be interesting to know what financing and operation and maintenance schemes they are employing.
Again drawing on the experience of my husband who was involved with building treatment plants in India: it is not too rare to find cases where the operators are "saving" on operating costs after the contractors have finished building the activated sludge treatment plants by first turning off the dosing of chemicals (e.g. flocculants for sludge thickening) and later even turning off the aerators... (which of course means the treatment plant fails to work at all).
If there is a strong regulator though (see Pawan's post above), then this can be prevented (?).

Regards,
Elisabeth