Suhaimi Abdul Talib (Prof. Ir. Sr. Dr. Hj.

)
Examination Hall (Level 7)
March 30th, 2016

Talk Summary: Emerging Technology and Current Issues of Water Treatment

According to the talk, arisen issues regarding water and wastewater have
become a concern to the academic people. This is because people nowadays
seems do not aware about the importance of preserving and appreciate water
resources and negligence about wastewater. In this modern era, rapid
developments opened up new opportunities of having a better life. But
developments brought to the increasing of population, hence skyrocketing the
demand of food, residential area, transportation and water resource. It is crucial
to know that resource of the Earth is finite and will be diminished as
developments and advancement of technology occurs. The production of waste
and sludge highly related to the increasing of population of a city. Not only that,
the affluent effect also contributes to the waste production because people have
the power to buy everything. Besides that, the advancement of science and
technology also affecting the volume of waste produced. Take example of
plastics

industries

which

produced

more

carbon

during

its

processing.

Developments also derived the climate changes problems and causing natural
disaster. This can be proven when deforestation take place, the excessive heat
from the Sun due to lack of absorbent causing evaporation of water to increase
and heavy rain occurrence. Landslides usually occurs subsequently due to the
bare soil which do not have any support to make them intact with ground. On the
other issues, some people take an easy way to get rid of the waste by disposing
them in lake, river and ocean. This poor attitude is a threat to the biotic
environment because not all the waste are biodegradable due to the uses of
extensive synthetic materials. People also failed to think of how to reduce the
production of wastes.
Hence, academic researchers globally are now striving to do extensive
researches about the sustainability of water resource that are safe for the human
consumption and how to reduce the waste production without harming the
environment. They are many ways suggested and one of them are by
incorporating multidisciplinary study such as combining the knowledge of civil
engineering with chemistry, and other science field. Other than that, researches

currently are encouraged to solve problems by numerical modelling and cannot

depend on tables anymore because the result of numerical modelling is unique,
generally approachable and will not be based on average solutions anymore. By
numerical modelling, researches will be able to do simulation of the specific
tasks that require them to solve. Not only that, stochastic models and advances
in specific areas are also one of the ways to encounter the environment
problems.
After appropriate method to access the problems has been established, it
is also important to know where it is going to be implemented especially in
Malaysia. The first and foremost, academic researches should locate the places
in Malaysia that facing tremendous changes in weather such as at Kelantan due
to its heavy floods and at Selangor with due to its water shortage which both
occurred in 2014. It is clearly can be seen that the environment currently are
worsen because of human activities that contributes to the climate changes
since Kelantan and Selangor had never been encounter this problems back then.
This related to the human activities because the developments causing the
changes of rainfall pattern. Secondly, researches should also focused more on
the water and wastewater services such as water demand analysis, new
treatment

technologies,

water

distribution

networks

and

water

resource

research. This is vital to reduce waste of water resource. For water demand
analysis, it is suggested that the water tariff should be increase to the very high
fees so that consumer will lower the water usage. Although there are abundant
water resource in Malaysia, people must know that the water resource is finite
and must be preserved.

The water distribution networks also must be

scrutinized so that leakages of water in the distribution pipe can be detected,

hence

reduce

the

water

resource

wastage.

Apart

from

the

water

for

consumption, wastewater monitoring also important as well. Did you know that
in America, the fees of the wastewater service is based on their clean water
consumption? Likewise in Malaysia, the wastewater service governed by Indah
Water Sdn Bhd only charges to their customer at fixed amount and only to be
paid every 3 months. People also must be taught that wastewater is more
complex and expensive to treat compared to clean water treatment.
On the other hand, researches also must know the type of pollutants that
going into the water such as recalcitrant organics, heavy metals, and
xenobiotics. These pollutants are very crucial parameters to be examined

because, the degree of treatments required are highly depended to these

characteristics. After the types of the pollutant have been categorized, the
technologies to be used will be the next agenda to be decide. There are many
kind of technologies that can be suggested to improve the water and wastewater
treatment currently. Although some of the technologies seems to be expansive, it
is considered affordable and worthy because the impact to the environment is
very low and considered as environmental friendly. The available technologies
nowadays are the characterization technique. This technology are based on the
respiratory of the microorganism in the water and wastewater which measures
the oxygen consumption by them daily. Next technology is the membrane
technology which incorporate the reverse osmosis technique. However the only
drawbacks of this technique is the consumption of energy is extremely high and
produce biofouling.
Apart from that, biotechnology method also can be implemented such as
the interaction between microbs, biochemical process and molecular biology.
Need to be noted that microbs also evolved with the type of pollutant produce
such as microbs with garbage waste is different with the microbs in petroleum
waste. Besides that, nanotechnology is also on the suggested method to treat
water and wastewater and the example are by using nano silver particle and
zero valent iron in the water. The next technology is the most common and
inexpensive which is the chlorination. In Singapore, the UV chlorination is used to
treat water and it is considered expensive but affordable since it has minimum
affect to the environment. On the other hand, the most conventional treatment
of water is by doing the rainfall harvesting. Although it seems to be common and
easy to be implemented, the initial cost of the installation of the devices are
expensive. This rainfall harvesting technique will produce water for agriculture,
vehicle cleaning industries and many more thus can lessen the clean water
consumption. Not only that, researches are also urges to find new sources of
clean water to avoid the dependency of surface water. Groundwater in Malaysia
is still under 10% of its utilities because it is considered as not profitable and
short term.
Likewise, the wastewater treatment issue in Malaysia is not at the best
state of its monitoring and operation. Prof Suhaimi mentioned that in Malaysia,
eliciting government staffs to work at wastewater treatment plan to undergo
disciplinary action seems to be the inappropriate. This is because to handle the

wastewater treatment plant required much competent and educated personnel.

Apart from that issue, sludge production in Malaysia also seems to be increasing
from time to time and unreducible. This is because there is lack of knowledge
regarding sludge management. Next issue is the footprint effects from the
wastewater treatment plants in Malaysia. Do you know in Thailand, there is a
high rise wastewater treatment plants? In Malaysia, the wastewater treatment
plants are all in landed area. Engineers in Malaysia should figure out the
technologies to innovate the current wastewater treatment plants and transform
it into a high rise building so that less land will be used to build the plants.
The next thing to access is the impact of the current water and
wastewater issue. The most prominent impact of the related to water is the
human health. Contaminated water will jeopardizing human health and cause
diarrhea, vomiting and even death. This issue can be seen from cases of food
poisoning reported to Ministry of Health Malaysia and the issue of the black
water at the coast of Batu Ferringhi, Penang. Not only that, economy of a country
also affected if the water resource is contaminated. This can be seen with
tourism losses, commercial fishing losses and shellfish poisoned and real estate
losses. In Malaysia, the case regarding the shellfish poisoned was occurred in
2015 at Sabah. Hence, it is very important for researches to do extensive
research on water and wastewater to reduce the possibilities of the mentioned
cases to occur again.