Wastewater reuse in Italy

2001 ◽  
Vol 43 (10) ◽  
pp. 43-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Barbagallo ◽  
G. L. Cirelli ◽  
S. Indelicato

In many parts of Italy, particularly in the South, it has become ever more difficult to meet the water demand. The recent years of drought and the constant increase of water demand for the civil sector have made irrigation supply more problematic. Wastewater reuse could represent a viable solution to meet water demand. The focus of this paper is on the regulation problems, hampering the development of wastewater reuse for irrigation, and on the potentials for reuse, particularly in Southern Italy. Planned exploitation of municipal wastewater could help meeting the irrigation water demand particularly in Southern Italy, where farmers have been practising uncontrolled wastewater reuse for a long time. In Northern and Central Italy, where available water resources generally meet water needs for different purposes, wastewater reuse could play an important role in controlling the pollution of water bodies. Despite the fact that Italian legislation is extremely strict and outdated, for several years in some regions, such as Sicily, wastewater reuse systems have been in operation; furthermore, several projects of wastewater reuse are currently in progress.

2004 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Gori ◽  
C. Lubello ◽  
F. Ferrini ◽  
F. Nicese

A three year experimental activity was carried out to evaluate the possibility of reusing Reclaimed Wastewater (RWW) in Pistoia's nursery area (Central Italy). The research was aimed at: 1. identifying the best tertiary treatment facilities in order to make the effluent in compliance with the current Italian legislation for RWW reuse, 2. evaluating the effects of RWW irrigation on some ornamental, 3. quantifying fertilizing value and environmental impacts of RWW irrigation. In this paper the results of the last year experimental activity are presented. Experimental results indicated that filtration and disinfection with peracetic acid plus UV were very effective in indicator bacteria removal; as a matter of fact, neither Escherichia coli nor Total Coliforms were detected in any samples of pilot plant effluent. Results of an agronomical experiment indicated the suitability of the tertiary effluent for the irrigation: at the end of the growing season a higher (or equal) total dry mass was detected in RWW irrigated plants than well-water (WW) irrigated ones. Finally, the tertiary effluent can be considered as an important source of fertilizer for container-grown plants. As a matter of fact RWW irrigation showed to be able to replace at least one of the traditional fertilization treatments.


2003 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 257-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
W.H. Chu ◽  
J.Y. Wang ◽  
C.M. Kao

Reuse of municipal wastewater has become a promising solution to relieve the tension of increasing fresh water demand in many metropolitans. Although different advanced technologies are available to reclaim wastewater into premium quality, associated health effects are usually not properly assessed in reclamation process selection. A simplified risk-based approach developed for process screening and adaptation of health impacts as a consideration in reclamation process selection is discussed in this paper. This approach can be used to screen out unqualified processes and those with poor cost benefits. As a result, the design of wastewater reclamation could be enhanced to control the associated health impacts in wastewater reuse.


2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Barbagallo ◽  
F. Brissaud ◽  
G.L. Cirelli ◽  
S. Consoli ◽  
P. Xu

In arid and semiarid regions the reclamation and reuse of municipal wastewater can play a strategic role in alleviating water resources shortages. Public awareness is growing about the need to recycle and reuse water for increasing supply availability. Many wastewater reuse projects have been put in operation in European and Mediterranean countries adopting extensive treatment systems such as aquifer recharge, lagooning, constructed wetlands, and storage reservoirs, mainly for landscape and agricultural irrigation. In agricultural reuse systems, there is an increasing interest in extensive technologies because of their high reliability, and easy and low cost operation and maintenance. Wastewater storage reservoirs have become the option selected in many countries because of the advantages they present in comparison with other treatment alternatives, namely the coupling of two purposes, stabilization and seasonal regulation. This paper describes an example of a wastewater storage system, built in Caltagirone (Sicily, Italy). The storage results in a tertiary treatment of a continuous inlet flow of activated sludge effluents. The prediction of the microbiological water quality has been evaluated by means of a non-steady-state first-order kinetic model. Single and multiple regressions were applied to determine the main variables that most significantly affected die-off coefficients. The proposed model has been calibrated using the results of a field monitoring carried out during a period from March to October 2000.


2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 179
Author(s):  
Enzo Colonnelli

Are described and illustrated two new Italian species of <em>Ceutorhynchus</em>. The first of them, <em>C. apenninus</em> n. sp. from central Italy, collected on the montane crucifer <em>Isatis allionii</em> P. W. Ball., is close to<em> C. peyerimhoffi</em> Hustache from Spain, Italy and Algeria, also living on Isatis. The second,<em> C. magnanoi</em> n. sp. from southern Italy is very close to the French<em> C. matthiolae</em> Hoffmann, and was collected of <em>Matthiola</em> like the species from southern France.


Plants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 362
Author(s):  
Ioannis Spyroglou ◽  
Jan Skalák ◽  
Veronika Balakhonova ◽  
Zuzana Benedikty ◽  
Alexandros G. Rigas ◽  
...  

Plants adapt to continual changes in environmental conditions throughout their life spans. High-throughput phenotyping methods have been developed to noninvasively monitor the physiological responses to abiotic/biotic stresses on a scale spanning a long time, covering most of the vegetative and reproductive stages. However, some of the physiological events comprise almost immediate and very fast responses towards the changing environment which might be overlooked in long-term observations. Additionally, there are certain technical difficulties and restrictions in analyzing phenotyping data, especially when dealing with repeated measurements. In this study, a method for comparing means at different time points using generalized linear mixed models combined with classical time series models is presented. As an example, we use multiple chlorophyll time series measurements from different genotypes. The use of additional time series models as random effects is essential as the residuals of the initial mixed model may contain autocorrelations that bias the result. The nature of mixed models offers a viable solution as these can incorporate time series models for residuals as random effects. The results from analyzing chlorophyll content time series show that the autocorrelation is successfully eliminated from the residuals and incorporated into the final model. This allows the use of statistical inference.


2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (6) ◽  
pp. 1917-1923
Author(s):  
David V. Carrera-Villacrés ◽  
Iveth Carolina Robalino ◽  
Fabian F. Rodríguez ◽  
Washington R. Sandoval ◽  
Deysi L. Hidalgo ◽  
...  

Abstract. Fog catchers have been successfully applied in several countries around the world. In Ecuador, the Galte communities in the Andean region suffer from water deficits because they are located at an altitude higher than 3500 m above sea level. Rainfall in the area is relatively low, about 600 mm per year, with high evapotranspiration of approximately 615.74 mm per year. This study aimed to install fog catchers in Galte in 2014 and 2015 to help meet the communities’ water needs. The fog catcher system was designed to satisfy the irrigation water demand for local agricultural production, mainly maize, based on estimates using the Blaney-Criddle method. Every day throughout the year, each fog catcher collected 5 to 20 L of water per m2 of catcher area. The results indicate that the fog catcher system can meet about 5% of the local water demand for agricultural production. Keywords: Ecuador, Evaporation, Evapotranspiration, Precipitation, Water deficit.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Canali ◽  
Gabriele Campanelli ◽  
Corrado Ciaccia ◽  
Mariangela Diacono ◽  
Fabrizio Leteo ◽  
...  

In sustainable agricultural systems, intercropping using living mulches (LM) provides many beneficial ecosystem services. The objective of these two-year field experiments was to study the suitability of different LM options of burr medic (<em>Medicago polymorpha</em> L. var. <em>anglona</em>) for organic cauliflower (<em>Brassica oleracea</em> L.) cultivation in two sites under Mediterranean conditions. In central Italy (Experiment 1) contemporary and delayed (to crop) sowings of LM were compared with a no-cover crop treatment, contrasting two local cauliflower cultivars and a F1 Hybrid. In southern Italy (Experiment 2) the sustainability of systems combining LM (anticipated and contemporary sowing compared with no-cover) and organic fertilisation strategies was assessed. The aboveground biomasses dry weights of cauliflower crop (heads and residues), burr medic and weeds were separately determined. Results suggested that in Experiment 1 the LM was not able to smother weeds establishment and growth, as a consequence of early sowing, while cauliflower yield was reduced. Moreover, the genotypes behaviour was greatly influenced by the LM sowing times. In Experiment 2, irrespective of the agronomic practices applied, climatic conditions notably influenced cauliflower cultivation and also reduced the mean yield. Therefore, the recorded differences between the two experimental sites highlighted the need to tailor the LM strategies to the different environmental conditions.


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