Delegates at the opening ceremony of the Green Technologies for Sustainable Water Conference in Hanoi. (Photo: VNA)
Hanoi (VNA) –
Some 150 scientists gathered in Hanoi to discuss how to develop environmentally
friendly, economically viable and energy efficient process to treat and
preserve the world’s limited water resources.
The three-day conference on
Green Technologies for Sustainable Water 2017 (GTSW) that began on October 14
was organised by five universities – the University of Technology Sydney,
University of Wollongong, Tianjin Polytechnic University, Vietnam’s University
of Science and Vietnam-Japan University (VJU).
Speaking at the opening
ceremony, VJU rector Furuta Motoo said the development of environment-friendly
technologies for water resource utilization and management is of vital
importance in the context of population growth. With global water resources
being gradually depleted, especially for countries strongly affected by climate
change like Vietnam, demand risks exceeding supply.
“There is an urgent need to
exploit and develop appropriate green technologies that promote design,
production and supply chain because the major cause of the world’s water
shortage and continued environmental deterioration is the unsustainable,
unregulated pattern of consumption and production,” said Executive chair
of the GTSW 2017 conference, Ngo Huu Hao.
The limitations on the
amount of fresh water from natural sources forced the water industry to
expand supplementary sources, such as rainwater, storm water, desalinated water
or recycled water, which in most cases need extensive treatment to ensure human
health and environmental safety, he added.
Prof Ashok Pandey from
India’s Centre of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing, one of the 150
scientists participating in the conference, presented microalgae-based
research, which he said has extensively progressed for the production of value
added products and biofuels.
“Coupling mass cultivation
of microalgae along with industrial waste waters, seawater with industrial
waste carbon sources seems to be beneficial for minimizing the use of fresh
water, reducing carbon, nutrient cost and producing algal biomass as resources
for biofuels and other high commercial value metabolities,” he said.
Prof Xiaochang C.Wang from
China’s Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology presented anaerobic
digestion of waste-to-resource recycling from food waste.
Food waste contains
recoverable resources and anaerobic digestion is a promising technology. A
combination of food waste treatment and waste-activated sludge treatment by
anaerobic digestion could become the new direction of urban waste management
through which the utilizable bio-resource can be recovered for both
nitrification enhancement and bio-energy production.
Dang Bao Trong from HCM
City University of Technology presented a study evaluating the treatment
performance of sponge membrane bioreactors in treating hospital wastewater with
elevated concentrations of ciprofloxacin (CIP) – a widely used antibiotic in
Viet Nam.
High concentration of
various antibiotics has been detected in wastewater of healthcare facilities in
HCM City. The average concentration of CIP in hospital wastewater in HCM City
was 4-5 times greater than in other Asian countries, he said.
Sponge membrane bioreactors
have been reported as an effective biological treatment process for hospital
waste water treatment.
Besides presentations,
lectures and reports, participants are also visiting the Yen So Waste Water
Treatment Station in Hanoi to learn about local water management and
treatment.-VNA