The IWA Conference on Pretreatment of Water and Wastewater, organized by Tongji University and International Water Association (IWA), was successfully held in Shanghai, from May19th to 20th, 2014. The topic of this conference is “The status and progress on Water Pretreatment Technology”.

Prof. Fengting Li, the Vice Dean of College of Environmental Science and Engineering and UNEP-Tongji Institute of Environment for Sustainable Development (IESD) chaired this conference and warmly welcomed all the guests present here. Prof. Wu Jiang, Vice President of Tongji University, and Dr. Li Tao, Director of China Regional Office for IWA delivered welcome remarks. Ioannis E. Alexiou, from IWA Specialist Group on Pretreatment, Jiuhui Qu, the academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, Arturo A. Keller, from University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, Mitchell Laginestra, GHD’s Service Line Leader, Industrial Water & Waste Management, Jia-Qian Jiang, from Glasgow Caledonian University, UK, Baoyu Gao, from Shandong University, Dongsheng Wang, from Chinese Academy of Sciences were invited to give keynote speeches in the Plenary Session. And other about 100 international and domestic experts in the field of water and wastewater pretreatment attended this conference.

Water is unique and the most precious resource for life. However, this natural resource is becoming polluted, and its availability in purest form is a major social and economic concern. Water treatment processes, especially pretreatment technology, has been widely used and developed all around the world. What kind of pretreatment process to use or to develop is up to the variety and complexity of source water and the specific requirements of secondary and tertiary treatment. This conference, lasted for two days, consisted of 11 keynote speeches, 38 presentations and 5 posters.

This conference provided an excellent opportunity to bring together many distinguished researchers, engineers, policy makers and industry suppliers in related fields around the world to share the experiences on the strategies and technologies for water pretreatment. Participants exchanged knowledge on emerging issues and technologies on Pretreatment of wastewater and drinking water.