Water use and reuse
The next depleted resource
“…water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink…”
The United Nations projects that the world’s per capita water supply will drop by 30 percent over the next 20 years, that a swath of the world’s population reaching from North Africa, through India, to China will have less than two percent of the world’s potable water supply—and that the United States will have between five and ten percent.
AEI’s approach to water conservation and water efficiency is no different than the fundamental question concerning any potential use of land: what is the highest and best use of this resource? From this perspective a holistic approach to use and reuse can be developed and integrated into project design and delivery. Our work in campus environment has provided expertise in now increasingly adopted approaches to graywater and rainwater collection.
Our work on such functionally intensive facilities as laboratories and hospitals has required a higher level of detailed analysis into potential reuse systems focused on additional sources of water (such as cooling coil condensate or process water) and cascading reuse scenarios.
We encourage critical assessment of such often overlooked areas of water consumption as the water resource consumed to provide cooling via evaporation in cooling towers. Our work with geothermal systems, either coupled to the earth or large bodies of water, can yield drastic reductions in energy and water consumption. Finally, our work in such process environments as food production has revealed unique opportunities to couple process water flows with building cooling, sanitary sewer, and irrigation uses to drastically reduce a project’s potable water profile.
