title: Nanotechnology for sustainable wastewater treatment and use for agricultural production: A comparative long-term study.
abstract: Nanotechnology applications can be used for filtering low quality waters, allowing under given conditions, the removal of salts and other micropollutants from these waters. A long-term field experiment, implementing nanotechnology in the form of UltraFiltration (UF) and Reverse Osmosis (RO) for salt removal from treated wastewater, was conducted with secondary effluents, aiming to prove the sustainability of agricultural production using irrigation with treated wastewater. Six outdoor field treatments, each under four replications, were conducted for examining the salt accumulation effects on the soil and the crops. The field experiments proved that crop development is correlated with the water quality as achieved from the wastewater filtration capability of the hybrid nanotechnology system. The key goal was to maintain sustainable food production, despite the low quality of the waters. Of the six treatment methods tested, irrigation with RO-treated effluent produced the best results in terms of its effect on soil salinity and crop yield. Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that this process is not only costly, but it also removes all organic matter content from the irrigation water, requiring the addition of fertilizers to the effluent.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences, McGill University, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC, H9X 3V9, Montreal, Canada.
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: De La Cueva Bueno
authors.affiliation: Zuckerberg Water Research Institute, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Kiryat Sde Boker, 8499000, Israel.
authors.forename: Leonid
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gillerman
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil Engineering, Room 569E, Macdonald Engineering Building, McGill University, 817 Sherbrooke St W, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 0C3, Canada.
authors.forename: Ronald
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gehr
authors.affiliation: Zuckerberg Water Research Institute, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Kiryat Sde Boker, 8499000, Israel. Electronic address: gidi@bgu.ac.il.
authors.forename: Gideon
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Oron
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D036103:Nanotechnology; D014462:Ultrafiltration; D014865:Waste Disposal, Fluid; D062065:Wastewater; D018508:Water Purification
chemical_list: D062065:Wastewater
keywords: Agricultural yields; Effluent quality; Nanotechnology; Six treatments; Wastewater