Economic Analysis of The Innovative Eco-Biofilter/Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) System for Community Wastewater Recycling

A prototype Eco-biofilter/MBR (Membrane Bioreactor) system has been developed and installed at a community in Chiang Rak Yai Sub-district, Sam Khok District, Pathum Thani Province, Thailand for community wastewater treatment and recycling. This research aims to investigate the performance of Eco-biofilter/MBR system, as well as the economic analysis of willingness to pay for wastewater treatment. A novel porous baked clay biofilter was also developed as an eco-friendly filter media to replace traditional plastic filter in order to reduce plastic pollution to water environment. The effluent quality from the system could meet the international standard for agricultural water reuse. The survey data for economic analysis were collected from the 281 households living in the studied area, analyzed by descriptive statistic and Contingent Valuation Method. The results show the fact that household's land use has an inverse relationship while the water source use positively correlates to the value of willingness to pay for wastewater treatment at the statistical significance level of 0.05. The economic analysis of the innovative wastewater treatment system reveals the appropriate wastewater treatment fee at 7 THB per cubic meter of wastewater that is a breakeven point. In addition, the Eco-biofilter/MBR also shows many benefits both of direct and indirect benefits such as water reuse potential, opportunity economic value of treated effluent, and reducing medical expenses. The benefit to cost ratio is equal to 1.04.