Haruka Takeuchi

Haruka TAKEUCHI is an assistant professor in Research Center for Environmental Quality Management (RCEQM), Kyoto University. Her research mainly focuses on water reuse using membrane technologies.
Water reuse is the use of reclaimed water for beneficial purposes. The advantages of water reuse are 1) to conserve and expand available water supply, 2) to reduce the costs and energy for water transportation, and 3) to protect aquatic ecosystems by reducing the discharge of toxic contaminants from wastewater treatment plants to aquatic environment. Since a variety of contaminants, such as pathogens and harmful chemicals, exist in urban wastewater, they should be adequately removed with advanced water treatment technologies for safe and secure water reuse.
Membrane technologies and advanced oxidation processes can effectively remove these contaminants. However, the disadvantages of these technologies include high energy consumption and operating costs. We believe that introducing nanomaterials, which are being developed in the field of material engineering, will be effective in reducing energy costs. Nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, and photocatalysts have high hydrophilicity and electron transfer properties. Thus, they have the potential to improve the water permeability of membranes and the amount of oxidant produced in advanced oxidation processes. Selecting nanomaterials that exhibit the best performance for water reclamation and proposing process design guidelines contribute to improve the reliability, affordability and flexibility of water reuse.