Innovative Water and Wastewater Treatment Technologies for the 21st Century (Paperback)

The last third of the 20th century saw considerable development in water and wastewater treatment technologies, particularly aerobic and anaerobic biological methods. The objective of wastewater treatment also expanded from a traditional emphasis on BOD and SS removal to encompass nutrient and toxic chemical removal. This is a consequence of the increasing public awareness of environmental problems and a strong desire for a clean environment to minimize any public health risk. In the West, secondary biological processes have become standard for most waste treatment applications. However, this type of treatment can be too expensive to use in most developing and underdeveloped countries. Sometimes, as for a city like Hong Kong, there may not be sufficient land available for constructing a conventional secondary biological plant. There is thus an urgent need to develop innovative technologies that can be successfully adopted by different nations so that the global environment can be significantly improved at minimum cost. With this in mind, a symposium was organized to provide a forum for leading water and wastewater experts to exchange their visions, ideas, experiences, and accomplishments in the development of new technologies that can meet the challenge of the 21st century for the global environmental clean-up. The 21 papers selected for these proceedings cover a wide range of topics from authoritative reviews of existing water and waste treatment technologies to the development of novel physical, chemical, and biological water and wastewater treatment methods.