Abstract
Mechanisms causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission in wastewater treatment plants are of great interest among researchers, encouraging the development of new methods for wastewater management. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) emit three major greenhouse gases during the treatment processes: , , and . Additional amounts of and are produced during energy consumption, which can be considered an indirect source of GHGs. Recently, several efforts have been undertaken to assess GHGs from WWTPs, with particular attention paid to the assessment due to its high warming potential (300 times stronger than ). This study proposes an integrated model platform for WWTP simulation, including the evaluation of both direct and indirect emissions as plant performance parameters. The results of extensive research demonstrate the importance of mathematical modeling for the development of a decision support system (DSS). The project involves four research units (RUs) united in effort to minimize the environmental impact of wastewater treatment plants in terms of both energy consumption and discharged pollutants (solids, liquids, and gases).
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) through the Research project of national interest PRIN2012 (D.M. 28 dicembre 2012 n. 957/Ric—Prot. 2012PTZAMC) entitled “Energy consumption and GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions in the wastewater treatment plants: a decision support system for planning and management” in which Giorgio Mannina is the Principal Investigator and Donatella Caniani, Giovanni Esposito and Riccardo Gori are the coordinators of the research units.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 145 • Issue 8 • August 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 4, 2016
Accepted: Nov 19, 2018
Published online: May 31, 2019
Published in print: Aug 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Oct 31, 2019
ASCE Technical Topics:
- [Inorganic compounds]
- Air pollution
- Business management
- Carbon compounds
- Carbon dioxide
- Chemical properties
- Chemicals
- Chemistry
- Dissolved gases
- Emissions
- Energy consumption
- Energy engineering
- Environmental engineering
- Gases
- Management methods
- Methane
- Organic compounds
- Pollution
- Practice and Profession
- Thermal pollution
- Wastewater treatment plants
- Water treatment
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