Efficient and Natural Method to Treat Household Wastewater in Oxidation Ponds

When waterways, rivers, lakes and freshwater reservoirs are polluted with untreated or poorly treated wastewater, this has a major impact on the environment, the economy of a country and the health of its population. In Peru, as in many other countries, oxidation ponds are often used for simple secondary treatment of sewage effluents. However, poor design, inadequate maintenance work, the unstoppable industrial development and population growth around urban centres has led to a progressive loss of efficiency of these ponds, and even to the collapse of some locations. This has caused odours, pollution and outbreaks of diseases in the affected communities. This projects aims to develop an efficient and natural process to treat household wastewater by absorbing the CO2 of polluted lakes and bringing out oxygen. This ecological and clean treatment process will reduce the operating costs (up to 40%), eliminate odours and reduce the incidence of disease in areas near treatment plants. This project is funded under a collaborative agreement between CONCYTEC (Peru's National Council for Science, Technology and Technological Innovation) and Grand Challenges Canada (funded by the Government of Canada) to support Stars in Global Health innovators based in Peru.