Life-Cycle Assessment of Tertiary Treatment Technologies to Treat Secondary Municipal Wastewater for Reuse in Agricultural Irrigation, Artificial Recharge of Groundwater, and Industrial Usages
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 146, Issue 6
Abstract
Life-cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to assess the environmental impacts of a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), along with 20 tertiary treatment options for reuse in agricultural irrigation, artificial recharge of groundwater, and industrial usages. Impact was adopted as the life-cycle impact assessment method. The results indicate that the energy consumed by the equipment accounts for 66.59% of environmental impacts of the WWTP. Moreover, consumption of the electricity generated by local biogas generators, instead of using the Iranian national grid, can be beneficial in mitigating the environmental impacts of the WWTP in the form of avoided impacts. LCA showed that a depth filter, granular activated carbon, and chlorination; a membrane bioreactor and chlorination; ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, and chlorination; and ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, a depth filter, coagulation/flocculation, and chlorination had the lowest environmental impacts for reuse in agricultural irrigation, artificial recharge of groundwater, cooling towers and other industries, and boilers, respectively. Energy consumption of tertiary treatment technologies is the primary contributor to the environmental impacts. This study indicated that because of high electricity and chemical consumption of the options for reuse in industries, their environmental impacts are higher than those of other options.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank PRé Consultants for providing a free faculty license of SimaPro.
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Received: Jul 20, 2019
Accepted: Oct 21, 2019
Published online: Mar 20, 2020
Published in print: Jun 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Aug 20, 2020
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