Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

The importance of system configuration for distributed direct potable water reuse

Nature Sustainability volume 3, pages 548–555 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Water and wastewater infrastructure worldwide faces unprecedented demand and supply conflicts that require unconventional solutions. In this study, we develop a novel modelling framework to assess the environmental and economic implications of a hybrid water supply system that supplements a centralized surface water supply with distributed direct potable reuse (DPR) of municipal wastewater, as a strategy to address such challenges. The model is tested with real water and wastewater systems data from the City of Houston, Texas. Results show that supplementing the conventional centralized water supply with distributed DPR would reduce water age in the drinking-water distribution network and hence improve water quality; properly designed system configurations attain system-wide net energy savings even with the high energy consumption of existing technologies used for advanced treatment of the wastewater. A target energy efficiency for future advanced treatment technologies is identified to achieve net energy saving with all hybrid system configurations. Furthermore, distributed DPR remains financially competitive compared with other unconventional water supply solutions. The modelling framework and associated databases developed in this study serve an important research need for quantitatively characterizing distributed and hybrid water systems, laying the necessary foundation for rational design of integrated urban water systems.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Schematic representation of the modelled water and wastewater system.
Fig. 2: Water age difference between no water reuse (Baseline) and full implementation (All open).
Fig. 3: Changes in electric energy consumption (mid case) from the Baseline over a 24 h simulation period.
Fig. 4: Percentage of distributed DPR system configurations that keep energy consumption lower than Baseline as a function of WWTP energy intensity.
Fig. 5: Changes in annual financial costs (US$20181 million) from the Baseline.
Fig. 6: Difference in electric energy consumption versus additional financial costs identified by reclaimed water percentage.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from Houston Public Works, but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study and so are not publicly available. Data are, however, available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of Houston Public Works.

Code availability

The software and custom-developed code for this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

References

  1. Daigger, G. T. Wastewater management in the 21st century. J. Environ. Eng. 133, 671–680 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Stillwell, A. S. et al. An integrated energy, carbon, water, and economic analysis of reclaimed water use in urban settings: a case study of Austin, Texas. J. Water Reuse Desal. 1, 208–223 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. National Research Council; Division on Earth and Life Studies; Board on Toxicology and Environmental Health Hazards; Commission on Life Sciences; Safe Drinking Water Committee in Drinking Water and Health Vol. 4, Ch. 5 (National Academies Press, 1982); https://doi.org/10.17226/325

  4. Mcallister, T. Developing Guidelines and Standards for Disaster Resilience of the Built Environment: A Research Needs Assessment Technical Note 1795 (NIST, 2013).

  5. Hejazi, M., Edmonds, J., Chaturvedi, V., Davies, E. & Eom, J. Scenarios of global municipal water-use demand projections over the 21st century. Hydrol. Sci. J. 58, 519–538 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Hanasaki, N. et al. A global water scarcity assessment under Shared Socio-economic Pathways—part 1: water use. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 17, 2375–2391 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. State of the Water Industry Report (AWWA, 2018).

  8. Kavvada, O., Nelson, K. L. & Horvath, A. Spatial optimization for decentralized non-potable water reuse. Environ. Res. Lett. 13, 064001 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Lee, J. & Younos, T. Sustainability strategies at the water–energy nexus: renewable energy and decentralized infrastructure. J. Am. Water Works Assoc. 110, 32–39 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Gikas, P. & Tchobanoglous, G. The role of satellite and decentralized strategies in water resources management. J. Environ. Manag. 90, 144–152 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Hering, J. G., Waite, T. D., Luthy, R. G., Drewes, J. E. & Sedlak, D. L. A changing framework for urban water systems. Environ. Sci. Technol. 47, 10721–10726 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. National Research Council Water Reuse: Potential for Expanding the Nation’s Water Supply through Reuse of Municipal Wastewater (National Academies Press, 2012).

  13. Gerling, A. Potable Reuse 101: An Innovative and Sustainable Water Supply Solution (American Water Works Association, 2016).

  14. Haarhoff, J. & Van der Merwe, B. Twenty-five years of wastewater reclamation in Windhoek, Namibia. Water Sci. Technol. 33, 25–35 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Framework for Direct Potable Reuse (Water Reuse Research Foundation, 2015).

  16. McDonald, E. & Nellor, M. H. Final Report: Direct Potable Reuse Resource Document Vol. 1 (Texas Water Development Board, 2015).

  17. Schroeder, E., Tchobanoglous, G., Leverenz, H. L. & Asano, T. Direct Potable Reuse: Supplies, Agriculture, the Environment, and Energy Conservation White Paper (National Water Resesearch Institute, 2012).

  18. Scruggs, C. E., Thomson, B. M. & Asce, M. Opportunities and challenges for direct potable water reuse in arid inland communities. J. Water Resour. Plan. Manag. 143, 04017064 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Lahnsteiner, J., Van Rensburg, P. & Esterhuizen, J. Direct potable reuse—a feasible water management option. J. Water Reuse Desal. 8, 14–28 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Zodrow, K. R. et al. Advanced materials, technologies, and complex systems analyses: emerging opportunities to enhance urban water security. Environ. Sci. Technol. 51, 10274–10281 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Kavvada, O. et al. Assessing location and scale of urban nonpotable water reuse systems for life-cycle energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Environ. Sci. Technol. 50, 13184–13194 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Jung, E., Criddle, C. S., Geza, M., Cath, T. Y. & Freyberg, D. L. Decision support toolkit for integrated analysis and design of reclaimed water infrastructure. Water Res. 134, 234–252 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Machell, J. & Boxall, J. Modeling and field work to investigate the relationship between age and quality of tap water. J. Water Resour. Plan. Manag. 140, 04014020 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Effects of Water Age on Distribution System Water Quality (EPA, 2002).

  25. Shamsaei, H., Jaafar, O., Ezlin, N. & Basri, A. Effects residence time to water quality in large water distribution systems. Engineering 5, 449–457 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Running Costs of Wastewater Treatment Plants http://www.costwater.com/runningcostwastewater.htm (CostWater, accessed 5 September 2018).

  27. Running Costs of Water Treatment Plants http://costwater.com/runningcostwater.htm (CostWater, accessed 9 November 2018).

  28. Cost of Desalination for Domestic Water Supply in the MENA Region (World Bank Group, 2016).

  29. What is the average unit cost of desalinated brackish groundwater? Seawater? Texas Water Development Board General FAQs http://www.twdb.texas.gov/innovativewater/desal/faq.asp#title-08 (accessed 1 April 2019).

  30. Guo, T., Englehardt, J. & Wu, T. Review of cost versus scale: water and wastewater treatment and reuse processes. Water Sci. Technol. 69, 223–234 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. City of Houston Electricity Bills http://data.houstontx.gov/dataset/city-of-houston-electricity-bills (Open Data Houston, accessed 6 September 2018).

  32. Najm, I. & Trussell, R. R. in Identifying Future Drinking Water Contaminants (National Research Council; Division on Earth and Life Studies; Commission on Geosciences, Environment and Resources; 1998 Workshop on Emerging Drinking Water Contaminants) 220–243 (National Academies Press, 1999).

  33. Arroyo, J. & Shirazi, S. Cost of Brackish Groundwater Desalination in Texas (Texas Water Development Board, 2012).

  34. Zhao, J. et al. Coordinated restoration of transmission and distribution system using decentralized scheme. IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 34, 3428–3442 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Kargarian, A. et al. Toward distributed/decentralized DC optimal power flow implementation in future electric power systems. IEEE Trans. Smart Grid 9, 2574–2594 (2018).

  36. El Paso Water. Advanced purification El Paso Water https://www.epwater.org/our_water/water_planning/advanced_purification (accessed 20 September 2018).

  37. Maseeh, G. P., Russell, C. G., Villalobos, S. L., Balliew, J. E. & Trejo, G. El Paso’s advanced water purification facility: a new direction in potable reuse. J. Am. Water Work. Assoc. 107, 36–45 (2015).

  38. Water Right 5827 (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, 2011).

  39. Molly, D. Drinking water operations The City of Houston https://www.publicworks.houstontx.gov/pud/drinkingwater.html (accessed 30 August 2018).

  40. US city populations 2018 World Population Review http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/ (accessed 21 September 2018).

  41. 2016 Regional Water Plan (Region H Water Planning Group, 2015).

  42. EPANET (EPA, 2008).

  43. EPANET: Application for Modeling Drinking Water Distribution Systems https://www.epa.gov/water-research/epanet (EPA, accessed 28 August 2018).

  44. Eck, B. J. An R package for reading EPANET files. Environ. Model. Softw. 84, 149–154 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Rossman, L. A. Epanet 2 users manual (US EPA, 2002).

  46. Arandia, E. & Eck, B. J. An R package for EPANET simulations. Environ. Model. Softw. 107, 59–63 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. epanetReader (GitHub, 2018); https://github.com/bradleyjeck/epanetReader

  48. epanet2toolkit (GitHub, 2017); https://github.com/bradleyjeck/epanet2toolkit

Download references

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation (award no. CBET-1707117), NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (ERC-1449500) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 51761125013). Part of the data used in this study was shared by Houston Public Works. The authors thank M. Ramon, P. Pradhan and F. Rabbi from Houston Public Works for data support and valuable technical discussions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Lu Liu, Evan Lopez, Leonardo Dueñas-Osorio, Lauren Stadler, Pedro J. J. Alvarez & Qilin Li

  2. Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT), Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Lauren Stadler, Pedro J. J. Alvarez & Qilin Li

  3. School of Science, Engineering, and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University, Middletown, PA, USA

    Yuefeng Xie

  4. School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Yuefeng Xie

Authors
  1. Lu Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Evan Lopez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Leonardo Dueñas-Osorio
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Lauren Stadler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Yuefeng Xie
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Pedro J. J. Alvarez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Qilin Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed intellectual input to this study. L.L., L.D.-O., L.S. and Q.L. designed the study, L.L. performed all analyses and worked with E.L. in configuring the model. L.D.-O., L.S., E.L., Y.X., P.J.J.A. and Q.L. worked on revising the manuscript. All authors contributed to the discussion of the results.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qilin Li.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–14, Tables 1–8 and Notes 1–4.

Reporting Summary

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Liu, L., Lopez, E., Dueñas-Osorio, L. et al. The importance of system configuration for distributed direct potable water reuse. Nat Sustain 3, 548–555 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0518-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0518-5

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing Anthropocene

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Anthropocene