SWINGS · Safeguarding Water resources in INdia with Green and Sustainable technologies

At a time with an urgent need to conserve water resources, efficient sanitation systems play a key role in sustainability. They can ensure that the vital resource Water is recovered from waste and can be re-used at the same time as protecting human health and the environment. The SWINGS project consortium will establish an optimal methodology for nutrient and energy recovery from wastewater (WW) at the same time as making the water safe for reuse, all in a manner conducible to rural communities in developing countries, with India as the concrete example. In particular, the SWINGS project will enlist already optimized municipal WW treatment concepts and combine ""green"" and sustainable technologies. The result will be enhances water recycling and re-use, decreased energy consumption, and production of useful by-products from the process as secondary resources. Thus, treated WW will be transformed to soil enrichment resource, to irrigation water, to aquaculture farm feed, via sustainable sanitation that safeguards the local drinking water supply in India.The starting point of the SWINGS project will be anaerobic digestion (AD) and constructed wetlands (CW) that will be configured with environmentally sustainable disinfection technologies, like water solar disinfection. Pilot plants will be designed and constructed in India that combine the treatment methods mentioned above, after which the new systems will be established in steady-state operation, and then, the AD-CW configurations optimized. Systems for disinfection of the effluent will be implemented and on-line monitoring of pathogen load attempted. Finally, life cycle assessment of several treatment configurations will be used to develop a decision support system for future selection of sustainable and efficient treatment technologies in developing countries like India. The project will publish articles and hold workshops in order to disseminate its results, especially to SMEs and to public authorities.""