Quantification and qualification of the urban domestic pollution discharged per household and per resident

Modeling spatiotemporal domestic wastewater variability: Implications for measuring treatment efficiency

Continuously measuring the efficiency of wastewater treatment plants is crucial to progress in sanitation management. Regulations for decentralized wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) can include rudimentary specifications for sporadic sampling, unencouraging continuous monitoring, and missing crucial domestic wastewater (DW) variability, especially in low- and middle-income countries. However, few studies have focused on modeling and understanding spatiotemporal DW variability. We developed and calibrated an agent-based model (ABM) to understand spatial and temporal DW variability, its role in estimated WWTP efficiency, and provide recommendations to improve sampling regulations. We simulated DW variability at various spatial and temporal resolutions in Santa Ana Atzcapotzaltongo, Mexico, focusing on chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total suspended solids (TSS). The model results show that DW variability increases at higher spatiotemporal resolutions. Without a proper understanding of DW variability, treatment efficiency can be overestimated or underestimated by as much as 25% from sporadic sampling. Sensor measurements at 6-min intervals over 3 hours are recommended to overcome uncertainty resulting from temporal variability during heavy drinking water demand in the morning. Reporting of sewage catchment areas, population sizes, and sampling times and intervals is recommended to compare WWTP efficiencies to overcome uncertainty resulting from spatiotemporal variability. The proposed model is a useful tool for understanding DW variability. It can be used to estimate the impact of spatiotemporal variability when measuring WWTP efficiencies, support improvements to sampling regulations for decentralized sanitation, and alternatively for designing and operating WWTPs.

Wastewater data from individual homes: Quantitative and qualitative measurements

The data article is related to the generation of raw wastewater from 15 single-family dwellings. Such a dataset is rare. They are complicated to set up due to the technical difficulty of deriving a representative sample of this kind of pollution, composed of suspended solids potentially very coarse in size, compounded by the administrative difficulty of performing these measurements on private property. The data were obtained by means of two distinct and complementary monitoring campaigns: i) continuous measurement of the volumes discharged by three of the 15 dwellings during more than one year, and ii) characterization, in terms of both quality and quantity, of more than 300 raw wastewater samples discharged over 24 consecutive hours by all 15 houses during weekly periods of seven consecutive days, which deliberately included weekend days. Their acquisition methodologies are described. The validation's methodologies, also described, include a R script. The data analysis can be used for i) designing and operating onsite and small wastewater treatment systems and ii) characterising the strictly domestic pollution. Therefore, this data article is associated with the manuscript “Quantification and qualification of the urban domestic pollution discharged per households and per resident”.The hydraulic values obtained with continuous measurement are available in two units: in l.s⁻¹ as primary data and in l.h⁻¹ as secondary data. They can be reused at any time step. These elements could be incorporated into future research or innovations related to single-family dwellings. In a general point of view, such data could be introduced in databases used for Life Cycle Assessment. These values can also be used in sanitation (collection, design and operation) and be useful to better specify the potential for the recovery of domestic wastewater.