Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

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  • DennisW
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Hi all,

I was asked to avail the links for the literature used in this study, so that publications used can be easily found.
I attached a colour coded word document that contains all links and highlights, which of the literature is already in the
SuSanA library, which ones are available for free and which ones arent freely available.

Best regards,
Dennis
Dennis Wolter
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  • DennisW
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Hi Dorothee,

thank you for your interest in my study and excuse the late response. Frankly speaking, I haven't been actively following up on SuSanA for a while.
As I've just seen your post about your research progress I assume that you found a workaround or answered your question already.
I should have mentioned the units in that database, I must have simply forgotten it when collating the data.

The units for water consumption and wastewater production are in L/cap*day, the parameters BOD, COD, TSS, N & P are in g/cap*d

Best regards,
Dennis
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  • dorothee.spuhler
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Hi Dennis

I am using the documents you shared as a reference for modelling mass flows of P, N, TS and H2O of sanitaiton system options for a case study in Nepal (and Ethiopia). They are very useful: thank you!
However, it is sometimes very difficult to understand the units of the values, particular in the database summary output in the first sheet of this document: " Wastewater Characteristics - Design Database" - can you give any information on that?

Thank you and best regards

Dorothee
WG1 Co-lead
Developing methods and tools to support strategic planning for sustainable sanitation. Particular interested in novel technologies contributing to more inclusive and circular sanitation. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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  • secretariat
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  • SuSanA secretariat currently allocates 2 full time person equivalents of time from members of GIZ Sustainable Sanitation Team: Arne Panesar, Alexandra Dubois, Maren Heuvels, Teresa Häberlein, Daphne Manolakos and Bettina-Sophie Heinz.
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Dear all,

The following publication "Communal Wastewater Characteristics in Developing Countries" is now available for download in the SuSanA library under this link: www.susana.org/en/knowledge-hub/resource...library/details/3263

Thank you Dennis for sharing the study!

Kind regards,
Ainul on behalf of the SuSanA Secretariat
Posted by a member of the SuSanA secretariat held by the GIZ Sector Program Water Policy – Innovations for Resilience
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  • Elisabeth
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Dear Dennis,

Your report on "Communal Wastewater Characteristics in Developing Countries, Desk Study to inform Sanitation System Design" looks excellent, thanks so much for sharing! I think many engineers designing treatment plants will find it useful.

And: Sharing is caring... So often we get people who ask questions, obtain responses and then move on but forget to come back to the thread and share their findings. So I am very grateful that you are different and that you are making this available to us. I am glad you found this forum helpful in giving you information.

Just a small thing: In your reference list, would you be able to provide the URLs for everything that you are citing? That would be really useful. If something is not yet online, we can upload it to the SuSanA library.

I'll also ask the secretariat to upload your report and the Excel files to the library (or someone from BORDA could do it, as BORDA is a SuSanA partner and partners can upload publications to the library themselves).

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Elisabeth
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  • jbachur
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Hola Denis:
Gracias por compartir el trabajo desarrollado.
Será difundido dentro del ámbito de acción de este organismo (ENRESS).
Luego de la lectura, subiré mis comentarios.
Saludos a todos.
Jorge Bachur
Ente Regulador de Servicios Sanitarios
Provincia de Santa Fe - Republica Argentina
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+++++++++
Note by moderator: Translation by Google Translate:

Hello Denis:
Thanks for sharing the work developed.
It will be disseminated within the scope of action of this body (ENRESS).
After reading, I will upload my comments.
Greetings to all.
Jorge Bachur
Regulator of Health Services
Province of Santa Fe - Republica Argentina

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  • DennisW
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Dear all,

I would like to share the study behind this thread with you. It was already finalised a while ago, but I only manage to share the report and results with you now.
Thanks to everybody within this community who greatly contributed to the data and results obtained.
I attached the report, which contains all the data collected and an in-depth analysis of the same.

The values are presented in 12 data tables, differentiating between water consumption/WW production, blackwater, greywater, water return coefficients, peak flow factors, nutrient and pollutant loads and differentiates between communal and institutional setups.

I developed a design interface that is able to predict wastewater charateristics for a given context, based on selected macro and micro parameters, whose applicability is also discussed in the report.

Furthermore, I developed a formula that is able to predict peak flow factors for small scale systems, as most formulas to date are only valid for centralised, large scale systems.
Two Excel based tools are attached: the simplified design interface that only contains the developed factors and the research database with all content (warning: takes a long time to compute, so the calculation setting should be set to manual).

I hope you find some of the findings interesting and useful and please do not hesitate to get back to me in case of further clarifications.

Best,
Dennis
Dennis Wolter
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  • DennisW
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Hi Philipe,

thank you for your contribution. I am aware of the ESRISS Project. Brilliant work that you did there! I included your results in my study and also used some of your methodologies and still find useful information in the reports, not only about WW characteristics, but also on the policy recommendations.
In my approach, I tried to find correlations on a more global basis, identifying climate and income as main influencing parameters and in the local context differentiating between local income groups, water supply (in house, yard tap, public water point < 200m, public water point > 200m) and sanitation interface (private/shared; full-flush/pour flush).
I furthermore managed to develop a formula to calculate PFF for small-scale systems for private toilets and community sanitation centres, based on literature data.
I am still finalising on the conclusion and some final touches, but I am happy to share the report once done.

Best regards,
Dennis
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  • phreymon
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  • I am a sanitation consultant, trainer and researcher, working for and with Eawag for more than ten years. I am specialised in planning non-sewered and decentralised sanitation systems in low- and middle-income contexts, urban and rural, as well as humanitarian, with an approach that falls today under the umbrella of citywide inclusive sanitation.
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Hi Dennis,

We did quite an intensive study on the topic in the Nile delta in Egypt, which you can find on www.sandec.ch/esriss .

The question was how to estimate the design parameters for small-scale sanitation systems for these villages. We found quite a heterogeneity of wastewater quantities and characteristics from one village to the other. Investigating that, we identified the factors influencing these parameters. Based on the data collected and a material flow analysis, we developed a tool to assess the design parameters, without the need of sampling. Being able to assess without sampling is particularly important, as there is often no sewer network in the initial situation, or no good sampling points. Besides, the wastewater production usually grows when a sewer network is implemented.

You can find all the documents in the "Baseline Data" and "Planning Tool" sections of the webpage.

All the best,

Philippe

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  • DennisW
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Hello Jorge,

thank you for the instant response. OK, in understand now that it is the actual water supply (incl. non-revenue water due to leakages and potential illegal connections)? Then this makes sense, but is not really useful as a design parameter to derive wastewater production per capita from this. But I will have a closer look at your BOD measurements.
I will let you know here in this thread ones my study is finalised.

Best,
Dennis
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  • jbachur
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Hola Dennis:
Gracias por haber leído con interés el trabajo enviado.
Los altos valores de consumo de agua (mayores a 400 litros /hab. día) son efectivamente ciertos, debido a un alto porcentaje de agua no contabilizada y falta de micromedición en las localidades de mayor población.
Será un gusto contar con una copia del informe del trabajo que estas desarrollando una vez que lo culmines.
Jorge Bachur
Ente Regulador de Servicios Sanitarios, Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina
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www.enress.gov.ar

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  • DennisW
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Re: Communal wastewater characteristics and population equivalents in developing countries

Hola Jorge,

thank you very much for your response. It is a very interesting study, although i had to use google translate to extract the information and hope that information did not get lost in translation.

I am currently finalising the report for this study, in which i collated more than 400 parameter sets from about 70 literature sources (textbooks, research papers, PhD thesis' etc.) with more than 2000 data points (mean, min/max, standard deviation values) on per capita wastewater characteristics (water consumption, wastewater production, pollutant loads (BOD, COD, TSS), nutrient loads (TKN, TP) and peak flow factors.

I also conducted statistical analysis with the data collected to find trends and mathematical correlations between income groups, climate and other key influencing parameters.
It became apparent in this study that there is by far less data available on per capita loads compared to concentrations, furthermore data on water consumption is easier to find than data on wastewater production (which can be easily explained with the simpler means of data collection). Hence, I was able to obtain by far more data on water consumption, than on wastewater production and additionally by far more data on water usage and wastewater production than on per capita.
However, it seems possible to find mathematical correlations between key characteristic parameters and key influencing factors.

Looking at the data you collected: The water consumption seems extremely high (average of 466 L/cap*d for , especially for bigger agglomerations. I assume that this also includes commercial activities? Are industrial wastewaters also included?

Looking at your regression analysis - I am a bit sceptical here, if these can be useful on a broader scale since some parameters seem very context specific (e.g. wastewater parameter depending on the level of satisfaction of basic needs).
However, i will have a closer look at it and try to incorporate the key outcomes in my database.

I furthermore appreciate it to get some data from Argentina, because most of the data I collected is from English reports, hence carried out in Anglophone countries. When benchmarking global characteristic this language barrier is a hindrance, to incorporate values from a broader range of countries.

I would be happy to share my outcomes with you once I finalised it.

Best regards,
Dennis
Dennis Wolter
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