ETHOS Technical Reports
Document Type
Report
Publication Date
8-28-2011
Abstract
Over the past forty years, the People’s Republic of China has transitioned from an isolated internal market to a country focusing their attention on a the global market economy; overtaking Japan in 2010 to become the world’s second largest economy behind the United States of America. China’s rapid growth in the global market economy has come at an enormous cost to the environment, especially the countries water sources, and to its people, who are still struggling against poverty and subpar standards of living. Like many developing countries in the world, China is faced with the issues of improving sanitation conditions and providing access to clean drinking water.
The University of Dayton’s (UD) Engineers in Technical, Humanitarian Opportunities of Service-Leaning, or ETHOS, partnered with the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering at Fudan University in Shanghai, China to develop sustainable water treatment solutions. Kimberly Mackowiak and Katherine Sipes worked with graduate students at Fudan, researching three different projects aimed at treating wastewater in a sustainable matter. These methods included bio-sand vermifilters, biological aerated filters, and carbon sequestration through algae cultivation. Together the students collected samples from the biological aerated filters and bio-sand filters, which were tested for total nitrogen and phosphorus content and chemical oxygen demand. The tests indicated that quality of the water in the effluent stream was significantly improved compared to the wastewater influent. The effluent water was within the acceptable chemical oxygen demand content according to China’s environmental water standards. However, for the water to be considered potable, further research, enhancements, and testing would need to be completed in order to improve the quality.
eCommons Citation
Mackowiak, Kimberly and Sipes, Katherine, "China: Sustainable Wastewater Treatment" (2011). ETHOS Technical Reports. 88.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/ethos_reports/88
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