Sustainable water management is essential to guaranteeing access to safe water and addressing the challenges posed by climate change, urbanization, and population growth. In a typical household, greywater, which includes everything but toilet waste, constitutes 50–80% of daily wastewater generation and is characterized by low organic strength and high volume. This can be an issue for large urban wastewater treatment plants designed for high-strength operations. Segregation of greywater at the source for decentralized wastewater treatment is therefore necessary for its proper management using separate treatment strategies. Greywater reuse may thus lead to increased resilience and adaptability of local water systems, reduction in transport costs, and achievement of fit-for-purpose reuse. After covering greywater characteristics, we present an overview of existing and upcoming technologies for greywater treatment. Biological treatment technologies, such as nature-based technologies, biofilm technologies, and membrane bioreactors (MBR), conjugate with physicochemical treatment methods, such as membrane filtration, sorption and ion exchange technologies, and ultraviolet (UV) disinfection, may be able to produce treated water within the allowable parameters for reuse. We also provide a novel way to tackle challenges like the demographic variance of greywater quality, lack of a legal framework for greywater management, monitoring and control systems, and the consumer perspective on greywater reuse. Finally, benefits, such as the potential water and energy savings and sustainable future of greywater reuse in an urban context, are discussed.
Doping of nanofiltration membranes with TiO2 nanoparticles was studied in the ultralow concentration range, in the absence of photocatalysis. Blended polyethersulfone/TiO2 flat-sheet membranes were manufactured and investigated in terms of pure water flux, permeability, fouling resistance and solute rejection. The membranes were synthesized at four different polymer concentrations by the phase inversion method, using 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) and deionized water as solvent and coagulant, respectively. The influence of TiO2 addition was investigated in an unusually low concentration interval (0.035–0.375 wt%). The membrane morphology was studied by determining particle size distributions of TiO2 to explore the effect of nanoparticle aggregation. Furthermore, membranes were characterized by hydrophilicity (contact angle), morphology (SEM), porosity, mechanical strength (bursting pressure) and thermal analysis (TGA). Membrane fouling was studied with humic acids as model organic foulants. Overall, a remarkable improvement in the permeability was observed with the addition of ultralow amounts of nanoparticles to the polymer. The optimum permeability was found to be as low as 0.085 wt%, using a constant rejection of dyes as the boundary condition. It was shown that rejection of solutes is not negatively influenced by the increase in permeability. In addition, the resistance against membrane fouling was found to be above 12% for the TiO2 blended membranes.