TY - JOUR
T1 - Environmental impacts of resource recovery from wastewater treatment plants
AU - Hao, Xiaodi
AU - Wang, Xiangyang
AU - Liu, Ranbin
AU - Li, Shuang
AU - van Loosdrecht, Mark C.M.
AU - Jiang, Han
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) clean wastewater and minimize water pollution; but, while doing so, they also contribute to air pollution and need energy/material input with associated emissions. However, energy recovery (e.g. anaerobic digestion) and resource recovery (e.g. water reuse) allow us to offset the adverse environmental impacts of wastewater treatment. Life cycle assessments (LCA) have been used more and more to evaluate the environmental impacts of WWTPs and to suggest improvement options. There is a need to search for resource recovery applications that genuinely realize a net-zero impact on the total environment of WWTPs. In this work, a scheme with highly efficient energy and resource recovery (especially for thermal energy) is proposed and evaluated. The environmental impact of a conventional WWTP in comparison with the scheme proposed here, with energy/resource recovery included, was calculated, and discussed with reference to LCA methodology. In the process of using LCA, it was necessary to choose a regional situation to focus on. In this case, a Chinese situation was focused as a reference, but the qualitative information gained is of worldwide relevance. The results clearly revealed that conventional WWTP does not benefit the total environment as a whole while the new scheme benefited the total environment via resource/energy recovery-based processes. Among others, thermal energy recovery played a significant role towards a net-zero LCA analysis (contributing around 40%) which suggests that more attention and research should be focused on it.
AB - Conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) clean wastewater and minimize water pollution; but, while doing so, they also contribute to air pollution and need energy/material input with associated emissions. However, energy recovery (e.g. anaerobic digestion) and resource recovery (e.g. water reuse) allow us to offset the adverse environmental impacts of wastewater treatment. Life cycle assessments (LCA) have been used more and more to evaluate the environmental impacts of WWTPs and to suggest improvement options. There is a need to search for resource recovery applications that genuinely realize a net-zero impact on the total environment of WWTPs. In this work, a scheme with highly efficient energy and resource recovery (especially for thermal energy) is proposed and evaluated. The environmental impact of a conventional WWTP in comparison with the scheme proposed here, with energy/resource recovery included, was calculated, and discussed with reference to LCA methodology. In the process of using LCA, it was necessary to choose a regional situation to focus on. In this case, a Chinese situation was focused as a reference, but the qualitative information gained is of worldwide relevance. The results clearly revealed that conventional WWTP does not benefit the total environment as a whole while the new scheme benefited the total environment via resource/energy recovery-based processes. Among others, thermal energy recovery played a significant role towards a net-zero LCA analysis (contributing around 40%) which suggests that more attention and research should be focused on it.
KW - Environmental impacts
KW - Life cycle assessment (LCA)
KW - Net-zero impact
KW - Resource recovery
KW - Thermal energy
KW - Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs)
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85066236833&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.watres.2019.05.068
DO - 10.1016/j.watres.2019.05.068
M3 - Article
SN - 0043-1354
VL - 160
SP - 268
EP - 277
JO - Water Research
JF - Water Research
ER -