After 5 months of launching, a contest to seek innovative ideas and designs for promoting smart water use has recently concluded in Da Nang.

First prize winners at the contest

The contest was jointly organised by the municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment, the Centre for Environmental and Community Research (CECR), the School of Environmental Science and Technology under the Ha Noi University of Science and Technology, and the Da Nang University of Science and Technology.

Its aim was to raise awareness and change water use behaviour of young people, residents and businesses in Da Nang.

In the end, Team HPTYT from the Faculty of Environment, the Da Nang University of Science and Technology, won the highest prize at the contest for their idea ‘Technology for reuse of wastewater after treatment combined with creating landscapes at homestays’.

In order to prove the feasibility of the project, the HPTYT team spent many months conducting surveys on wastewater use in homestays in Hoa Bac Commune, Hoa Vang District.

Nguyen Ngoc Han, a student of class 20MT, leader of the team, said that through surveys, her team found that most of untreated domestic wastewater from homestays was discharged directly into the land or underground sewer systems at homestays.

According to Han, in order to protect the water security of Cu De River - which is determined to meet about 40% of the clean water demand in Da Nang by 2050 (equivalent to 400,000 m³ of water per day and night), the team came up with an idea to clean wastewater through the wastewater collection and pretreatment systems.

From the idea, the team proposed to design an anaerobic baffled reactor. Accordingly, wastewater is collected and treated in the anaerobic baffled reactor, and then is pumped into the wet soil model for cleaning.

The treated water will flow into a storage tank used to water plants in homestays. Also with this method, the residual water after treatment will be discharged into the Cu De River.

Currently, most of the homestays in Hoa Bac Commune are operating in a fragmented and small scale, without a standard wastewater collection and treatment system.

Nguyen Van Trung, a member of the HPTYT team, said that the good treatment of waste discharged from homestays contributes to keeping the Cu De River clean and free of pollution in the future.

“My group’s idea has a low cost at about VND100 million for a system depending on the operating capacity. The figure includes the costs of designing, installing the drainage pipe system and growing landscaping plants” Nguyen Van Trung said.

Dr. Nguyen Dinh Huan, Dean of the Faculty of Environment of the Da Nang University of Science and Technology, highly appreciated the educational effectiveness that the competition brought.

According to him, the contest not only aroused the creative and scientific research spirit amongst students, but also helped to select feasible and effective water use ideas.

One of the contest's target criteria is high applicability, suitable for Da Nang's weather and climate conditions and the scale and operation process of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Mr. Vo Nguyen Chuong, Deputy Director of the municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment, a member of the jury affirmed that the contest created a source of quality, new and highly feasible ideas.

The organizers will connect prize-winning ideas to business incubators and investors in the city to support their developers to perfect their ideas.

The contest contributes to realising the city's important goal of raising public awareness when using water, aiming to build Da Nang into a sustainable ecological and environmentally friendly city in the future.

Reporting by HUYNH LE - Translating by M.DUNG