scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment of Community-Based Sewer Mining: Integrated Heat Recovery and Fit-For-Purpose Water Reuse

Environments ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Ludwig Paul B. Cabling ◽  
Yumi Kobayashi ◽  
Evan G. R. Davies ◽  
Nicholas J. Ashbolt ◽  
Yang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Water Reuse ◽  
Heat Recovery ◽  
Municipal Wastewater ◽  
District Heating ◽  
Resource Recovery ◽  
Municipal Sewage ◽  
Fit For Purpose

Municipal sewage contains significant embedded resources in the form of chemical and thermal energy. Recent developments in sustainable technology have pushed for the integration of resource recovery from household wastewater to achieve net zero energy consumption and carbon-neutral communities. Sewage heat recovery and fit-for-purpose water reuse are options to optimize the resource recovery potential of municipal wastewater. This study presents a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) focused on global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication potential (EUP), and human health carcinogenic potential (HHCP) of an integrated sewage heat recovery and water reuse system for a hypothetical community of 30,000 people. Conventional space and water heating components generally demonstrated the highest GWP contribution between the different system components evaluated. Sewage-heat-recovery-based district heating offered better environmental performance overall. Lower impact contributions were demonstrated by scenarios with a membrane bioreactor (MBR) and chlorination prior to water reuse applications compared to scenarios that use more traditional water and wastewater treatment technologies and discharge. The LCA findings show that integrating MBR wastewater treatment and water reuse into a district heating schema could provide additional environmental savings at a community scale.

Evaluating new processes and concepts for energy and resource recovery from municipal wastewater with life cycle assessment

2015 ◽  
Vol 73 (5) ◽  
pp. 1074-1080 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Remy ◽  
M. Boulestreau ◽  
J. Warneke ◽  
P. Jossa ◽  
C. Kabbe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Municipal Wastewater ◽  
Wastewater Treatment Plants ◽  
Resource Recovery ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Iso 14040 ◽  
Using Data

Energy and resource recovery from municipal wastewater is a pre-requisite for an efficient and sustainable water management in cities of the future. However, a sound evaluation of available processes and pathways is required to identify opportunities and short-comings of the different options and reveal synergies and potentials for optimization. For evaluating environmental impacts in a holistic view, the tool of life cycle assessment (LCA, ISO 14040/44) is suitable to characterize and quantify the direct and indirect effects of new processes and concepts. This paper gives an overview of four new processes and concepts for upgrading existing wastewater treatment plants towards energy positive and resource efficient wastewater treatment, based upon an evaluation of their environmental impacts with LCA using data from pilot and full-scale assessments of the considered processes.

scholarly journals Life cycle assessment of high rate algal ponds for wastewater treatment and resource recovery

2018 ◽  
Vol 622-623 ◽  
pp. 1118-1130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Terumi Arashiro ◽  
Neus Montero ◽  
Ivet Ferrer ◽  
Francisco Gabriel Acién ◽  
Cintia Gómez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Resource Recovery ◽  
High Rate ◽  
High Rate Algal Ponds

Life cycle assessment of introducing an anaerobic digester in a municipal wastewater treatment plant in Spain

2015 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 835-842 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Blanco ◽  
Sergio Collado ◽  
Adriana Laca ◽  
Mario Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Emissions ◽  
Municipal Wastewater ◽  
Treatment Plant ◽  
Impact Category ◽  
Treatment Scenario ◽  
The Impact

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is being established as a standard technology to recover some of the energy contained in the sludge in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) as biogas, allowing an economy in electricity and heating and a decrease in climate gas emission. The purpose of this study was to quantify the contributions to the total environmental impact of the plant using life cycle assessment methodology. In this work, data from real operation during 2012 of a municipal WWTP were utilized as the basis to determine the impact of including AD in the process. The climate change human health was the most important impact category when AD was included in the treatment (Scenario 1), especially due to fossil carbon dioxide emissions. Without AD (Scenario 2), increased emissions of greenhouse gases, mostly derived from the use of electricity, provoked a rise in the climate change categories. Biogas utilization was able to provide 47% of the energy required in the WWTP in Scenario 1. Results obtained make Scenario 1 the better environmental choice by far, mainly due to the use of the digested sludge as fertilizer.

Environmental assessment of different dewatering and drying methods on the basis of life cycle assessment

2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 783-788 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Stefaniak ◽  
A. Żelazna ◽  
A. Pawłowski
Keyword(s):  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Municipal Wastewater ◽  
Negative Influence ◽  
Drying Methods ◽  
Drying Process ◽  
Energy Consuming ◽  
Environmental Burdens ◽  
Sewage Systems

Sewage sludge is an inevitable product of wastewater treatment in municipal wastewater plants and its amount has increased dramatically due to the growing number of sewage systems users. This sludge needs to be adequately treated in order to decrease its hazardous properties and any negative influence on the environment. In this paper, gate to gate analysis, on the basis of life cycle assessment (LCA), was carried out in order to compare the environmental impact of alternative ways of sludge processing employing a dewatering press and three different kinds of dryers – belt dryer, container dryer and batch dryer. SimaPro 7.2 software and Ecoinvent 2.2 database were used to estimate the carbon footprint and energy balance of these processes. The main energy consumption in the scenarios analyzed is caused by the drying process. The solution based on application of the batch dryer allows a saving of 39.6% of energy compared with the most energy-consuming solution using a belt dryer. Sludge processing using belt and container dryers cause greater environmental burdens.

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