Optimal Design of an Electrochemical Reactor for Blackwater Treatment
Abstract
Electrolysis of blackwater for disinfection and nutrient removal is a portable and scalable technology that can lessen the need for cities to construct large‐scale wastewater treatment infrastructure and enable the safe onsite reuse of blackwater. Several systems for treating wastewater from single toilets are described in the literature, but there are few examples of systems designed to use electrolysis to treat blackwater from nearby toilets, which is a situation more common in densely packed urban living environments. In order to scale a single toilet electrolysis system to one that could service multiple toilets, computational fluid dynamic analysis was used to optimize the electrochemical reactor design, and laboratory and field‐testing were used to confirm results. Design efforts included optimization of the reactor shape and mixing to improve treatment efficiency, as well as automated cleaning and salt injection to reduce maintenance and service requirements.
Additional Information
© 2020 The Authors. Water Environment Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Water Environment Federation. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Issue Online: 24 December 2020; Version of Record online: 05 July 2020; Accepted manuscript online: 09 June 2020; Manuscript accepted: 30 May 2020; Manuscript revised: 22 May 2020; Manuscript received: 28 February 2020. This work was supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, contract service agreement ID 43951 (STeP project) and grant OPP1170650 to Kohler and OPP1192374 to Caltech. We gratefully acknowledge PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Coimbatore for supporting the test site installation and operation on their campus. We acknowledge the contribution of Adrian Berg to implement the Venturi salt injection system. The authors have no conflict of interest to declare. Data availability statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.Attached Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 103804
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20200609-145216163
- 43951
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- OPP1170650
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- OPP1192374
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- Created
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2020-06-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field