The demand for water is increasing every day and therefore increases its underground and surface extraction. This has led to the need to optimize hydraulic resources more and if possible increase them, so as not to find the fact that consumption exceeds the amount of resources, at least not for a long period of time. And besides, we must not fail to bear in mind how this extraction of the resource to our environment is hurting, because at the end of the day it is where we live and what we live.
When we talk about water management we are including several processes, which would be the following:
- Desalination of seawater.
- Water purification.
- Water purification.
- Water reuse.
- What is water desalination?
This process involves removing some or all of the salt and other minerals from seawater to be converted into drinking water so that it can be used as human consumption or for the farmer sector. There is no single formula to perform this process, it can be done through: freezing, distillation, evaporation… But the most recurrent route today is what we call reverse osmosis.
In future blog articles we will delve into this term so stay tuned.
The desalination process is carried out in waste water desalination plants (EDAR).
What is water purification?
This process is based on wastewater treatment. It consists of 3 steps to follow:
- Devastation and sedimentation: This first step removes physical, biological and chemical contaminants from water after being used by humans. The goal is to get you to the quantity and quality you need.
- Oxidation of organic waste: thanks to suitable bacteria and fermentation, these organic residues are transformed into salts.
- Disinfection: ultimately get rid of salts, metals and more leftovers.
Like the desalination process, debugging is also done in wastewater treatment stations.
What is water purification?
In this process what we want to achieve is to transform it into drinking water for human consumption. This process is distributed in a series of threads where each one removes a different contaminant. Let’s see what they are:
First you get the water and it’s transported to the station where it will be treated.
Once the water in the season, through some pumps the water treatment phase pro gravity is performed.
Third, coagulant is added to the water being treated.
By means of the decanting phase the water is detached from the sediments.
To be sure of its total decontamination, then a filtration process is carried out where the water will already be cleansed of any residues or particles that had not yet been removed.
Once all these steps are done, the water is ready to be distributed for reuse.
The water purification process is carried out in an ETAP (Drinking Water Treatment Station).
What is water reuse?
The water treatment plants perform a fine-circuit treatment in the water so that it can later be used for agricultural, irrigation, industrial purposes. After treatment the water is transported through special pipes, which in some cases undergo additional disinfection processes, until they are reused.
Good water management: goals
For what purposes are all these water management processes carried out? Here we leave you a list with some of the goals you want to achieve after treating water.
- Inventory of available resources
- Make sustainable use of water and not allow its consumption to be higher than the natural surcharge for a long time.
- Organize the resource well to make a good distribution at the national level.
- Increase the efficiency of water use.
- Have the problem of contamination under control.
- Increase the resources of the hydraulic sector: through public works and instilling the reuse and recycling of water.
- Awareness of the importance of water saving.
- Always take into account the quality of the water, both in its distribution and storage.