As the GWR Project approaches its final stage, scientific team leaders and members convened both in-person and virtually. The meeting served to review accomplishments, identify areas for enhancement, and consolidate lessons learned from this initiative focused on the treatment and reuse of domestic gray water, which constitutes over 60% of typical household water consumption.
Dr. Esteban Quijada, GWR Director, explains: “The final milestone for our project is the operational implementation of our gray water treatment and reuse technologies within the techno house. This full-size residence is designed to generate gray water during its normal use, which will then be purified by the sophisticated system collaboratively designed by multidisciplinary research teams from Usach, UNAB, and the University of Bío-Bío. This innovative integration allows for water recycling, making a more efficient and sustainable use of this increasingly precious resource. Beyond water conservation, we are also eager to demonstrate how this reuse process can contribute to other benefits, such as significant energy efficiency.”
“The results from our various teams are now virtually consolidated,” the academic noted. “The next step is the crucial technological integration of these systems within real home conditions.”
According to Dr. Julio Romero, a GWR Project researcher, the initiative “has proven the power of transdisciplinary team integration. We’ve shown that working across diverse fields—from architecture, engineering, and chemistry, all the way to communications with the community and authorities—allows highly coordinated teams to positively impact both quality of life and environmental stewardship.”
Dr. Romero highlights that the initiative’s ultimate objective is to “project these results towards the development of water and energy resilient communities, particularly within a challenging climatic environment.”
Emerging Contaminant Treatment and Agricultural Reuse
The project has yielded highly relevant results, including its capability to remove emerging contaminants. Felipe Olea, a postdoctoral researcher focused on gray water treatment processes, sheds light on this: “We are currently developing polymers specifically designed to capture these types of contaminants. We’re also testing these polymers in conjunction with various solvents to identify combinations that offer superior removal properties. The broader aim is to intensify these treatment processes, significantly improving water purification performance, with the future vision of converting gray water into potable water.”
He explains that these pollutants, including compounds from sunscreens, pharmaceuticals, and microplastics, are not removed by traditional treatments and are currently contaminating rivers and, ultimately, the sea.
The project also features noteworthy research on the application of treated graywater for plants intended for green walls within the pilot house. This scope has expanded to include agricultural crops, representing a further opportunity for water reuse. Gabriel Illanes, a project researcher, elaborates on this development: “We possess a significant portion of the experimental data regarding plant behavior in green walls. We are concurrently commencing new research into agricultural applications, through which we will monitor the results of strawberries and tomatoes irrigated with treated graywater. To this end, a greenhouse is being installed to meticulously record the yields of these crops under treated water irrigation.”
Dr. Camila Burgos, the lead researcher for the pilot house construction, concludes by saying: “Our objective is to have the gray water recovery and treatment systems installed and fully operational in the pilot house within the next two months. We are keenly anticipating the commencement of these solutions in a live setting, which will allow us to validate, in practice, the outcomes of all research conducted under the project’s framework to date.”