Water recovery from treated urban wastewater by ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis for landscape irrigation

Techno-economic feasibility of water recovery from secondary effluents of an urban wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) for landscape irrigation was investigated considering two distinctive strategies: ultrafiltration (UF)/chlorination and UF/reverse osmosis (RO). Experimental performance evaluations were conducted separately for UF membranes and for different RO trans-membrane pressures. The quality of the effluent recovered by the UF/RO system was in accordance with the national and international guidelines. The produced reuse water was first class quality according to the national guideline for all parameters except sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), which can be eliminated readily by direct addition of KCl into the recovered water. Estimated field-scale costs indicated that UF/RO yielded a total cost of US$12,500,000–13,600,000 with annual operating cost being US$482,000–533,000 at 5–20 bar. The economic estimations guaranteed reimbursement with US$7,600,000–7,400,000 net present value, 0.22–0.39 year payback time, US$0.44–0.49/m3 treatment cost, and a benefit/cost ratio of 0.57.