Approximately, seventy (70) percent of world water use including all water diverted from rivers and pumped from underground sources is used for agricultural irrigation. The reuse of treated municipal wastewater for purposes such as agricultural and landscape irrigation reduces the amount of water that needs to be extracted from natural water sources as well as reducing discharge to the environment. Thus, treated municipal wastewater is a valuable water source for recycling.
Water recycling is reusing treated wastewater for beneficial purposes such as agricultural and landscape irrigation, industrial processes, toilet flushing, and replenishing a ground water basin (also referred to as ground water recharge).
The recovered water from RO and from a Vacom evaporator/crystallizer will be used for ground water recharge in the US Inter-Mountain West. The Vacom system acts a final process to limit concentrated brine discharges by converting the brine to a solid waste thereby eliminating the possibility that a brine stream can redissolve into a usable water source.
As projects like these become accepted as the norm rather than the exception, drought conditions can be substantially alleviated.