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Item Water security in South Africa: perceptions on public expectations and municipal obligations, governance and water re-use(Creative Commons Attribution Licence, 2016-07-03) Sershen, S.; Rodda, N.; Stenström, Thor-Axel; Schmidt, S.; Dent, M.; Bux, Faizal; Hanke, N.; Buckley, C. A.; Fennemore, C.South Africa is a water-scarce country with increasing pressure on its water resources. Urgent interventions are needed to protect water security within this rapidly developing country. This paper reports on an interdisciplinary Water Security Colloquium, convened by the South African Young Academy of Science in 2014. A selected group of water professionals from academia, civil society and local government was brought together to discuss water security under three focus themes: ‘public expectations and municipal obligations’, ‘water security and governance: challenges and advances’, and ‘water re-use: health and infrastructural considerations’. Participant perceptions were generated using a focus group methodology, combined with participatory data collection methods. Under each theme, inputs were categorised as ‘challenges’, ‘gaps in knowledge’, and ‘solutions/recommendations’ and these inputs were thereafter ranked in order of importance via a ‘voting’ process. Major challenges perceived included a lack of both skills and political will in government, a need to restore citizen trust in government intention and capability to deliver water-related services, and a failure to up-scale existing water re-use technology. Participants identified understanding of the process and implications of the Green and Blue Drop Programmes, knowledge transfer to the public, and the role of educators as major knowledge gaps. The top suggestions proposed included creating public awareness around and buy-in to initiatives to improve water security, accessible and user-friendly conversion of research results to implementation, and ensuring an active role for educators in creating awareness around water security. In view of the concerns identified, participants suggested as potential solutions: improving government and public understanding around water issues, incentivising water re-use and conservation, introducing rising block tariffs and improving human capacity development in the water sector. Developing the ecological infrastructure that protects both quantity and quality of water and building strong partnerships among all stakeholders were also recognised as key.Item Development of poly (aspartic acid-co-malic acid) composites for calcium carbonate and sulphate scale inhibition(Taylor and Fancis, 2014) Kumar, N. Mithil; Gupta, Sanjay Kumar; Jagadeesh, Dani; Kanny, Krishnan; Bux, FaizalPolyaspartic acid (PSI) is suitable for the inhibition of inorganic scale deposition. To enhance its scale inhibition efficiency, PSI was modified by reacting aspartic acid with malic acid (MA) using thermal polycondensation polymerization. This reaction resulted in poly(aspartic acid-co-malic acid) (PSI-co-MA) dual polymer. The structural, chemical and thermal prop-erties of the dual polymers were analysed by using scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry and gel permeation chromatography. The effectiveness of six different molar ratios of PSI-co-MA dual polymer for calcium carbonate and calcium sulphate scale inhibition at laboratory scale batch experiments was evaluated with synthetic brine solution at selected doses of polymer at 65–70°C by the static scale test method. The performance of PSI-co-MA dual polymer for the inhibition of calcium carbonate and calcium sulphate precipitation was compared with that of a PSI single polymer. The PSI-co-MA exhibited excellent ability to control inor-ganic minerals, with approximately 85.36% calcium carbonate inhibition and 100% calcium sulphate inhibition at a level of 10 mg/L PSI-co-MA, respectively. Therefore, it may be reasonably concluded that PSI-co-MA is a highly effective scale inhibitor for cooling water treatment applications.