New residential areas and cities are one of the most and currently ongoing projects in Palestine and at large scale.
This project aimed at designing of an environmental friendly, green neighborhood at one of the hill sides of Nablus.
This project was designed as a model to be used as a construction guideline from one side. From the other side, to be as a system for checking the current environmentally related practices and common procedures in Palestine.
Design of project covers several areas such as: water distribution, sewage collection, treatment and reuse, storm water management, solid waste collection and management, and alternative energy practices. Also, different scenarios for each category were discussed and the best solution was chosen for each
Of most important results of this project; municipal water demand was decreased by 70% due to utilization of conservation techniques and recycle of treated water. Storm water was managed with the minimum cost. Quantities of solid waste to be transferred to landfills without any useful utilization was decreased by 88%. Finally, potential for green alternative energy was maximized and proposed to completely replace the purchased electricity from power utility providers. CO2 productions inside the city was also minimized.
The project is a promising feature for an optimistic integration of environment and economy in Palestine, and its solutions should be considered by housing and city planners in the region.
For designing of water distribution network by Epanet, we took three scenarios:
I. Providing water during 24 hours.
II. Pumping water twice in week.
III. Compound system of direct supply and tower tank.
In the design of wastewater collection system, the slope of sewers followed the slope of the ground to decrease the cost of construction the sewers, but we note that the velocity of sewage was too small comparing with minimum velocity (0.6-0.9 m/s) because of the low production of sewage in sewer, due to few people in some buildings. And we tried to find a solution of this problem by increasing the inverts until 5m underground surface but no affective change in these velocities.
The solution to this problem was using the method appropriate to this case is called SMALL BORE SEWER (SBS), which was a very effective method in terms of performance and environmental
Two alternatives were evaluated for wastewater treatment at Nablus Al-Fadilah neighborhood:
1) To do one centralized treatment plant that will treat the wastewater generated from the whole neighborhood.
2) Small treatment units (Septic Tanks) to serve one or a group of housing units
Treatment plant in Nablus Al-Fadilah neighborhood consist three stages:
Ø Interceptor tank in SBS.
Ø Septic tank (UASB).
Ø Sequence batch reactor tank (SBR).
in the household treatment the designer in Nablus Al-Fadilah neighborhood use two alternatives:
Household treatment plant to each residential unit or group of residential units, which contain black and gray wastewater together (without separation).
Household treatment plant to each residential unit or group of residential units, which separate gray and black wastewater (with separation).
Many types of container can be used to collect the wastes, and these types sorted based on volume, these volume contain 1m3, 2 m3, 4 m3 and 6 m3. After collect the wastes, you should dispose it during short interval
In general, Nablus Al-Fadilah is a green neighborhood so to choose the best alternative and recommended to use in it the designer should choose the most environmental alternative and the best reuse option of wastewater treated.
This alternative is household treatment units with separated gray and black wastewater, this treatment method recommended to green neighborhoods around the world, no needed sewer network, and can treated gray wastewater and black wastewater at separated units, that gives different ways to reuse treated wastewater, in general treated gray wastewater use to flushing, surface irrigation and maybe for washing machine, and treated black wastewater use in subsurface irrigation.
Solid waste management in Nablus Al-Fadilah neighborhood calculates the volumes of containers to every units, and separate the wastes into two types:
1- Solid waste that we can recycle it, as glass and plastic.
2- Organic solid waste, which may use in composting to produce biogas or fertilizer material.
The method of separate these two types is by use sorted into different colored containers then collected for recycling for example newspapers, plastic bottles, cans, and glass. And recommended to composting materials that contain organic matters, many methods can be composting the organic rubbish one of these methods is “In-vessel compost”, this method is recommended to use in Nablus Al-Fadilah neighborhood because it’s a good environmental method
After human arrived to a high degree of urbanization and its entry in races for creation of large cities and turning people to live in it. Then, many problems begun to appear, such as high population density, pollution, global warming and other environmental problems.
Create windbreaks on the east and west sides to protect from cold winds which may blow in winter, thus reducing heat loss can be very efficiently
To reduce air pollution and environmental effects, footpath and bike path have been provided to encourage people to move within the neighborhood on foot and with bicycles
In Nablus Al-Fadilah residential, several of alternative energy which are more capable to produce a clean and renewable energy with no or little pollution compared with fossil fuels was used in some fields, but we should take in consideration that difficult to dispense fossil fuels in power generation completely in our case.
It is worth mentioning that the energy that can be obtained from renewable sources by using current technology represents more than 6 times the energy used in the world at the present time
Should be mentioned that use renewable energy is still limited in the world and is considered expensive compared with fuel. However, the country and societies should take many steps toward achieve a sustainable energy future and then reduce climate change and save money that used to treat the harmful effect caused from pollution by taking into account environmental cost when calculating the economic cost.
Because the sun is not available over time, it was found that the use of solar energy would not be sufficient to be utilized solely. Also the minimum wind velocity allowed to run generator well is about 4-5 m/s, and the wind velocity in Nablus Al-Fadilah is about 3.5 m/s, and this velocity is not sufficient to supply all the energy we need, because of this, we propose a hybrid system between solar and wind power to capture all of the energy needed by the neighborhood.