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Ni Zhu: Regulation in the water treatment industry—Embracing reclaimed water to address water scarcity

The following story was written in April 2019 by Emma Herdegen in ​ENGL ​4824​: Science Writing ​as part of a collaboration between the English department and the Center for Communicating Science.

This head-and-shoulders photo shows a young Asian woman with short curly dark hair and a big smile. She is wearing a pink/red top and a necklace.
Ni "Joyce" Zhu

Drinkable or “potable” water is a finite resource that continues to be scarce for many communities. Climate change may sometimes threaten accessibility, particularly in water-stressed areas. One possible—yet controversial—solution is reclaimed water. Reclaimed water is water that has been contaminated in the urban water cycle and then treated to a level where it can be used in place of potable water. However, for a public audience this source of water is still contentious—many people still think, “Oh, that’s the poopoo water, how can you reuse it?”

    Within Virginia Tech’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ph.D. candidate Ni “Joyce” Zhu seeks to address this mindset and to aid in research on water treatment and distribution systems.

    With a focus in environmental and water resources engineering, Zhu is involved in studying the distribution  process as it influences the safety of reclaimed water. Originally from China, she has been interested in environmental studies since she attended high school in Singapore. This interest continued through her undergraduate studies at the National University of Singapore and led to a master’s degree at MIT in civil and environmental engineering.

    According to Zhu, one of the biggest problems in the recycled water industry is a lack of regulation.

    “There is no standard way of treating the water—there is no EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] regulation at the federal level. Each state or each city figures out a way for design and use," she said. "If they want more nutrients in the water, they will treat it to a very minimum extent and then use it for agriculture.”

    If they want it for landscaping, or flushing the street, or for recreational use there are different levels of treatment. The focus of Zhu’s research is the presence of harmful microbes in the water and the extent of treatment needed to negate them.

    “Sometimes people don’t really care [about some dangerous microbes] because it is not directly used for drinking,” she explained. “For example, one of the biggest concerns I am looking at is the transport of bacteria through these systems and how our current treatment strategies can deal with those emerging pathogens.”

    Dealing with these pathogens would allow for safe use of  recycled water for a broader range of applications and hopefully provide more available potable water.

    Zhu’s project involved testing wastewater effluent gathered from the Christiansburg wastewater treatment facility in a controlled environment and observing the effects of various treatment strategies on water chemistry.

    “It’s a huge team effort. That’s also one of the most exciting parts,” Zhu said. “I kind of learned from this project. I was very lucky to have this undergrad researcher to help  me. He went to the wastewater treatment facility to gather water twice every week.”

    The nature of this project and the level of physical involvement required meant that the project was long term. She finished the data-gathering portion before her fifth and final year of her Ph.D. program.

     “Now that I’m done with the experiment and data collection  phase, we’ve got a lot of data, so we’re trying to see how the water treatment strategies can influence the microbial communities,” she explained. “The microbial communities are ultimately the health risk and hazardous [to humans] and whoever is exposed.”

    After gathering extensive data, Zhu and her team hope to help better understand reclaimed water risks and the standardization of its treatment.

    Some of the biggest challenges, in Zhu’s experience, are lack of education on the part of the public and effective communication on the part of the researcher. Even within her own research team, Zhu found that instructions on how to take data and how to conduct research, though clear to her, could be confusing to other people and lead to inconsistent results. An average person who has never participated in this research or people in a different focus of this field would likely have even more difficulty understanding Zhu’s research process. Getting across a sufficient amount of information while still being comprehensible to a wide audience is something that many researchers struggle with, especially in a topic as universal as water treatment.

     “Going to conferences and starting to talk about the emerging microbial contaminants” is important, Zhu said.

    “Even in the water industry, some people are not aware of it," she explained. "The current research in the industry is not focused on it yet, and [there needs to be] a lot of discussion, especially in the industry in terms of education."

    Specifically, education for the public about water reuse as well as those directly involved in the field would be a considerable step towards the acceptance of the necessary process of water recycling. A more standardized approach of disinfection methods could bring clean water to previously deprived communities on a global scale.