Water Technology And Development

This book presents the results of the Interdisciplinary Research Group "Society – Water – Technology" of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. It describes interdisciplinary evaluation criteria for major water engineering projects (MWEPs) and portrays an application to the Lower Jordan Valley (Middle East) and the Fergana Valley (Central Asia). Both areas are characterised by transboundary conflicts, by challenges due to demographic and climate change and by political and societal pressures. Based on the findings, the book provides recommendations for science and political decisions makers as well as for international financing institutions. In addition, it outlines research gaps from an interdisciplinary perspective. In the past, MWEPs have been used as an instrument to cope with the demands of growing populations and to enhance development progress. Experiences with MWEPs have shown that a purely technical approach has not always brought about the desired results. In many cases, MWEPs have even resulted in negative implications for society and environment. Therefore, improved management strategies and enhanced technologies for a sustainable water resource management system are a prerequisite to meet present and future challenges. And, moreover, the continuous evaluation and optimisation of these measures is, likewise, a must.

Just as space, territory and society can be socially and politically co-constructed, so can water, and thus the construction of hydraulic infrastructures can be mobilised by politicians to consolidate their grip on power while nurturing their own vision of what the nation is or should become. This book delves into the complex and often hidden connection between water, technological advancement and the nation-state, addressing two major questions. First, the arguments deployed consider how water as a resource can be ideologically constructed, imagined and framed to create and reinforce a national identity, and secondly, how the idea of a nation-state can and is materially co-constituted out of the material infrastructure through which water is harnessed and channelled. The book consists of 13 theoretical and empirical interdisciplinary chapters covering four continents. The case studies cover a diverse range of geographical areas and countries, including China, Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Nepal and Thailand, and together illustrate that the meaning and rationale behind water infrastructures goes well beyond the control and regulation of water resources, as it becomes central in the unfolding of power dynamics across time and space.

Tackling the issue of water and wastewater treatment nowadays requires novel approaches to ensure that sustainable development can be achieved. Water and wastewater treatment should not be seen only as an end-of-pipe solution but instead the approach should be more holistic and lead to a more sustainable process. This requires the integration of various methods/processes to obtain the most optimized design. Integrated and Hybrid Process Technology for Water and Wastewater Treatment discusses the state-of-the-art development in integrated and hybrid treatment processes and their applications to the treatment of a vast variety of water and wastewater sources. The approaches taken in this book are categorized as (i) resources recovery and consumption, (ii) optimal performance, (iii) physical and environmental footprints, (iv) zero liquid discharge concept and are (v) regulation-driven. Through these categories, readers will see how such an approach could benefit the water and wastewater industry. Each chapter discusses challenges and prospects of an integrated treatment process in achieving sustainable development. This book serves as a platform to provide ideas and to bridge the gap between laboratory-scale research and practical industry application. Includes comprehensive coverage on integrated and hybrid technology for water and wastewater treatment Takes a new approach in looking at how water and wastewater treatment contributes to sustainable development Provides future direction of research in sustainable water and wastewater treatment

Environmentalism and social sciences appear to be in a period of disorientation and perhaps transition. In this innovative collection, leading international thinkers explore the notion that one explanation for the current malaise of the “politics of ecology” is that we increasingly find ourselves negotiating “technonatural” space/times. International contributors map the political ecologies of our technonatural present and indicate possible paths for technonatural futures. The term “technonatures” is in debt to a long line of environmental cultural theory from Raymond Williams onwards, problematizing the idea that a politics of the environment can be usefully grounded in terms of the rhetoric of defending the pure, the authentic, or an idealized past solely in terms of the ecological or the natural. In using the term “technonatures” as an organizing myth and metaphor for thinking about the politics of nature in contemporary times, this collection seeks to explore one increasingly pronounced dimension of the social natures discussion. Technonatures highlights a growing range of voices considering the claim that we are not only inhabiting diverse social natures but that within such natures our knowledge of our worlds is ever more technologically mediated, produced, enacted, and contested.

Based on new primary and secondary drinking water standards, this detailed manual presents water treatment methods that are considered the "best available technology" by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It examines the design of water supplies for membrane water treatment plants, including reverse osmosis, membrane filtration, and electrodialysis methods, and it explains process design and the water quality problems associated with each process. It also considers significant aspects of membrane process and groundwater and surface water supply development. Information necessary to operate water supplies and evaluate problems in the system are provided, in addition to specific well construction details necessary for the water wells used to supply membrane plants.

Technology in American Water Development is an exploratory study. This book addresses the proven technology which has influenced water development in the past, those still effective in shaping its course and the emerging technology of today. The heart of this study is in the thirty-one case descriptions selected from both the emerging and proven technology. Each case description has been treated as briefly as is consistent with clarity, and nontechnical language has been used wherever possible. This title will help to introduce engineers and physical scientists to the administrative problems and opportunities which stem from their works.