Increasing demands on freshwater mean that wastewater reuse for irrigation will become more important.   There is an increased risk of disease transmission where wastewater is used for irrigation of plants which can be eaten raw.  While solar disinfection processes have been proven to efficiently inactivate various pathogens in drinking water, solar disinfection has not been studied for enhancing the microbial quality of wastewater for reuse in the irrigation of food crops. This study investigated solar disinfection of real wastewater in compound parabolic (CPC) reactors, with and without the addition of hydrogen peroxide, and the subsequent contamination of irrigated crops (lettuce).  E. coli was used as the model microorganism. The WHO guidelines for unrestricted irrigation (for uncooked food crops) recommend =1000 faecal coliforms/100 ml. Our results show that solar disinfection could be used as a treatment to reduce faecal coliforms to acceptable levels for irrigation of food crops.

Solar disinfection of wastewater for reuse in food crop irrigation

248th National Meeting (2014)

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