Project Acronym: INWA

Project Summary

Palestinian agri-food industries discharge wastewater without prior treatment into open water channels or municipal sewers. Governance, financial, and human resources and stringent legislations are challenges for further development of the Palestinian industrial sector. The project aimed at addressing these challenges by promoting sustainable industrial water and environmental management in Palestine by developing practical applications of innovative integrated wastewater management systems. These applications covered different system levels (watershed, industrial zone, industry, treatment plant, and reactor).  For this purpose, an integrated applied approach with multidisciplinary researches was applied. Three heavy industrial polluters (Nablus, Hebron, and Gaza), located in different Mediterranean watersheds were selected. A combined approach of improved compliance with current regulations and promote cleaner production (CP) were initiated to influence the investment plans of the industries (optimal mix of CP and waste treatment) and improve their adherence to regulations.

Overall and Specific Objectives

The overall objective of this research project is aimed at the promotion of sustainable management of hazardous industrial wastewater with organic-rich contents through innovative integrated management practices and technologies. The following are the specific objectives of this project:

1. Governance analysis considering local context while merging the Dutch experience in managing, monitoring, and control of hazardous industrial discharges
2. Develop an updated list and description of the major industries including industrial process description and industry size in the Wadi Zaimer catchment area.
3. Identify the most polluting industries in the catchment area and estimate the water consumption and pollution loads of each industry and analyze current disposal practices.
4. Investigate the impact of sludge retention time (SRT) on blended OMW/sludge digestion in terms of methane gas production, phenolic compounds removal, and process stability.
5. Investigate the impact of OMW/sludge mixing ratio on methane gas production, phenolic compounds removal, and process stability, at a given optimal SRT.
6. Potential of constructed wetlands to attenuate anaerobically pre-treated olive mill wastewater.
7. Investigate the feasibility of resource recovery from high-rate algal ponds for fertilizer production from dairy wastewater treatment.
8. Determine process design parameters for dairy wastewater treatment using bench-scale and pilot systems.
9. Compare the feasibility of using UASB reactors, activated sludge units, and determine critical process design parameters for slaughterhouse wastewater.
10. Identify the critical volume of anaerobically pre-treated dairy wastewater for irrigating olive trees with emphasis on biomass growth and soil quality.

Project Partners