Fez - Students at the University of Kenitra are putting waste water back to use with the help of a cutting edge water treatment facility.
The water cleaning equipment uses technology first designed by the European Space Agency (ESA) to filter urine and waste water and recycle it into potable drinking water.
Water in the village of Sidi Taibi near Kenitra, just a thirty-minute drive outside of Rabat, has recently become unsuitable for consumption due to the high amount of nitrates and fertilizer found in the groundwater there, according to a report by ESA.
The University of Kenitra teamed up with UNESCO and ESA to find a sustainable solution to provide clean drinking water to residents. The Moroccan Minister of Higher Education, Lahcen Daoudi, was on site to sample the drinking water during the opening ceremony of the sustainable water treatment facility in Sidi Taibi earlier this week.
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Photo courtesy ESA[/caption]
ESA has been working for the last twenty years to develop water-recycling technology to produce clean water and oxygen for astronauts living in space. “One solution ESA is working on is to use bacteria, algae, filters and high-technology together so the organisms produce oxygen, water and food from waste,” according to ESA.
The water treatment facility at the University of Kenitra is applying the same methods to supply their residents with a greater amount of clean drinking water. One of the processing systems uses a membrane filtering system with holes so microscopic they are 700 times thinner than a strand of human hair. “These tiny pores can filter out unwanted compounds in water, in particular nitrate,” according to the ESA report.
The green facility is self-sustainable and uses solar panels and wind energy to power the system. This model is the first of its kind to be assembled in Morocco and will provide for 1200 university students. The extra water and energy that is generated will be supplied to the local community. If the filtration system works as planned, the entire system could be augmented to provide clean drinking water to the surrounding population and neighboring areas.
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Water Treatment Unit. Photo courtesy ESA[/caption]
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