TRANSFORMING BASE SUBSTANCES INTO GOLD
Water Management for LEED or BREEAM Certified Buildings
Introduction
Water Management for LEED Credits – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a rating system devised by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) to evaluate the environmental performance of a building and encourage market transformation towards sustainable design. BREEAM is the equivalent British Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method. It is is a sustainability assessment framework that rates the environmental performance of buildings, infrastructure, and master planning. It’s the world’s leading method for assessing and rating a building’s sustainability. Work on creating BREEAM began at the Building Research Establishment (based in Watford, England) in 1988. The first version for assessing new office buildings was launched in 1990.
What Must Architects Do?
Architects must start to decentralize water treatment for large and small buildings alike: Ideally, in an Eco building, water and waste water streams need to be SEPARATED and managed as such: Water from toilets, Black Water, needs to have separate piping from Grey Water, water from showers, sinks and laundry washing facilities. Also, Waterless Urinals are a must as Urine contains 50% of the N and P load in sewage. Those nutrients can be recovered by Struvite Precipitation. Yellow Water is a resource. Finally, always collect rain water for the dry season and use it for irrigation.
Hospitals needs to treat their waste water at the SOURCE to KILL all germs including anti-biotic resistant germs. We cannot continue to flush potable water down the toilet.
Sea facing buildings would ideally use seawater for flushing. Simple.
Water Management Technologies
Water management technologies that can help eco-friendly designed buildings to earn LEED credits are:
Chemistry Aspects
1. Eco friendly anti-scalants that are 100% Biodegradable
2. Eco friendly biocides/cleaners such as NSF certified potable water biocides
3. Eco friendly bacteriostatic/biocidal technologies such as:
– Ultra-sound technologies that kill bacteria and algae
– Electro-magnetic waves that kill bacteria
– Ozone
– Electrolytic technologies that use Silver electrodes or produce Hydrogen Peroxide from water and air
– UV light
– Biostable water technologies that remove N and P from water
– Use regenerable filters to capture CO2 as Soletair are doing in Finland.
Water Recycling Technologies
4. Technologies that help cooling towers to achieve high Cycles of Concentration hence lower water wastage by decreasing blow-down volumes and frequency. Using Demineralized water is the way to achieve up to a 100 CoC.
5. Waste water treatment technologies that recycle waste water as opposed to wastage to sewer
6. High efficiency Filtration technologies that lower Suspended Solids in the cooling water which is part of Legionella Management plans that are mandatory in countries such as the UK.
7. Rain water collection and use for landscape irrigation
8. Water vapour harvesting from evapo-transpiration (ET).
9. Use weather data to automatically control irrigation for any sprinkler system to save water.
10. AOP (Advanced Oxidation Processes) are environmentally friendly processes that help to reduce the BOD and Bacterial Bioburden in your cooling tower.
11. Using appliances with WaterSense-labeled products in the USA which meet EPA’s specifications for water efficiency and performance, and are backed by independent, third-party certification.
Figure 1. WaterSense Logo
Waste Management, Air Quality and Energy Efficiency
12. Any LEED cetified building is required to have Construction and Demolition Waste Management Planning. Cities must become Urban Mining centres of the Circular Economy.
13. Any LEED certified building is required to have a Building Product Disclosure and Optimisation – Material Ingredients plan.
14. Any LEED certified building is required to have a Minimum Indoor Air Quality Performance Prerequisite according to ASHRAE Standard 62.1 updated to version 2010.
15. Any LEED certified building is required to use Low-Emitting Materials. For example, some times of floor covering are known to emit VOC’s. Certain types of plastic piping are known to leach plasticizers, etc.
16. Any LEED certified building is required to use low or NO mercury lamps. Reduced mercury limit from 90 picograms per lumen hour to 70.
17. Any LEED certified building is required to have a Green Cleaning Policy. Chemicals that are biodegradable must be used. LEED V.4 added a provision for non-chemical and ionized water cleaning.
18. Any LEED certified building is required to have a maximum background noise of 40 dBA. Noise is killing us in cities…
Kremesti Environmental Consulting Recommendations
19. Kremesti Environmental recommends treating sewage on site with sustainable waste water treatment technologies such as the Organica Waste Water Treatment method and the Living Machine waste water treatment method. Separating Black Water from Grey Water is a MUST as separation of rain water from the other two. Recover N and P from Urine. Add Potassium or element K from wood ash and you have N-P-K the fertilizer gold of farmers.
20. Kremesti Environmental recommends the use of dry urinals and the recycling of urine which contains 50% of the N and P load of domestic waste water. This helps with Nutrient Neutrality calculations too. Urine can be treated and the nutrients recycled as fertiliser.
21. Membrane based technologies for sewage treatment are modern another way to recycle water from grey water and raw sewage to reduce the load on municipal WWTW’s.
22. Chemical-Free method for closed cooling water system treatment which is based on Demineralized/Potable water.
Figure 2: Point categories for LEED certification
Conclusion
Environmentally friendly homes and buildings are the future. Making homes and buildings environmentally friendly involves a slew of measures in design, construction and operations/maintenance of the building/home. We also need to slowly decentralize water and waste water treatment as well as resource recovery.
For a consultation on how to earn LEED/BREEAM credits for your buildings, contact us.
Rami E. Kremesti M.Sc., CEnv, CSci, CEnv
References
2. LEED
About the Author:
Rami Elias Kremesti was trained as a chemistry specialist in Lebanon and the USA. He is chartered in the UK with CIWEM, the UK Science Council and the UK Society for the Environment. He was been working in the water treatment field for over 20 years.
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Rami Elias Kremesti Portrait