Water quality management and treatment technologies

Research focus

The Peer review has evaluated this group as Good

In the last two decades, problems relating to the shortage of high quality water and pollution of surface waters and groundwater have increased dramatically. This has promoted research and development for advanced treatment aimed at reaching a lower impact of final effluents on receiving water bodies, thus implementing also the opportunity to promote, as a subsequent natural step, water reclamation and reuse. In fact in many Italian regions there is a growing interest for the production of repurified water to be reused both in agriculture and industries. On the other hand, since the national and international water legislation is moving toward a watershed-based approach, the developing of decision-support tools on the field of the resource planning is also needed. Research projects have been (and currently are) addressing all critical issues arising in this general framework, and can be partitioned into the two following main sub-groups: (a) Water quality management and planning at the watershed level and (b) Water and wastewater treatment technology. Specific research activities are detailed in the following. o Water quality planning and management at the watershed level. Research is focused on Assessment study for the integration of point and non point sources effects on water quality of river basins. In the context of the Water Framework Directive (2000/60CE), the river system is seen as the central element of the watershed-based management for protection. In such a context research has been addressed on the definition, and validation over few case studies, of a GIS-integrated methodological framework aimed to the evaluation of management alternatives. Planning and management of water resources requires an overall classification of water quality in order to assess its suitability for an intended use. Several indices and sub-indices have been proposed in order to aggregate several water quality parameters into a single overall quality index and Factorial analysis has been applied. The research program is still ongoing: calibration and validation of model predictions according to field measurements are in progress on the main river systems of Lombardy. o Water and wastewater treatment technology. The area of water treatment is strongly active within the Department, both on the side of primary water treatment and on the side of wastewater treatment technology. The main objectives are: to provide a better knowledge of newly proposed treatment systems and evaluate their potential and their actual field of application; to study operational problems and to find operational solutions to improve the management of water and wastewater treatment plants. In the period taken into consideration research focused on the following major axes: - Advanced treatment technology. Main research programs deal with: newly developed technologies such as Membrane Bio-Reactors (MBR) for treatment of both wastewater and concentrated streams; evaluation and assessment of technically and economically feasible post-treatment trains for proper agricultural and/or industrial reuse, with particular reference on health protection and therefore on disinfection units; in this framework an experimental pilot plant, capable to treat up to 4.5 m3/h and using different disinfection agents in parallel, was operated for a long period on the effluent of a biological WWTP, previously contact-filtered. - Efficient operation of wastewater treatment plants. Research programs about this topic cover biological-process monitoring by means of biosensors, early detection and control of biological foaming in activated sludge plants, development of indicators and indices to monitor the management of wastewater treatment plants through Environmental Management Systems (EMS), such as ISO14001, EMAS. - Anaerobic treatment for co-digestion of liquid and organic wastes has been selected as one of the most promising sectors since it couples disposal of wastes with energy generation; at present work continues to be in progress in this field.

Dipartimento di afferenza

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Idraulica, Ambientale, Infrastrutture Viarie, Rilevamento (DIIAR)

Docenti afferenti

Full Professors
Luca Bonomo
Costantino Nurizzo
Renato Vismara
Associate Professors
Roberto Canziani
Francesca Malpei
Assistant Professors
Manuela Antonelli
Arianna Azzellino
Elena Ficara