Innovative system for decentralized wastewater treatment

Abstract

At EU level, the percentage of the population connected to central water supply systems ranges from 53.5% to 98.8%, depending on the country, and about 20 million inhabitants (mostly from rural or remote areas) are without proper sanitation systems. The innovative decentralized wastewater treatment system developed within the INNOQUA project aimed to integrate individual low-cost, sustainable, and biologically-based water sanitation technologies capable of performing a whole water treatment cycle, with different configurations adapted to local contexts and markets with potential for industrial scale-up. These technologies resemble natural cleaning processes and are based on the treatment capacity of earthworms, zooplankton, and alternatively microalgae and sunlight exposure. The paper presents a short review of the INNOQUA technologies capabilities and the results of the INNOQUA system installed in Romania as demo-site serving the treatment of wastewater generated by a touristic/office building in Ilisesti, Suceava.