The aim of this work is to quantify the relative contribution to the overall environmental impact of the construction phase compared to the operational phase for a large conventional activated sludge wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). To estimate these environmental impacts, a systematic procedure was designed to obtain the detailed Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) for civil works and equipment, taking as starting point the construction project budget and the list of equipment installed at the Girona WWTP, which are the most reliable information sources of materials and resources used during the construction phase. A detailed inventory is conducted by including 45 materials for civil works and 1,240 devices for the equipment. For most of the impact categories and different life spans of the WWTP, the contribution of the construction phase to the overall burden is higher than 5% and, especially for metal depletion, the impact of construction reaches 63%. When comparing to the WWTP inventories available in Ecoinvent the share of construction obtained in this work is about 3 times smaller for climate change and twice higher for metal depletion. Concrete and reinforcing steel are the materials with the highest contribution to the civil works phase and motors, pumps and mobile and transport equipment are also key equipment to consider during life cycle inventories of WWTPs. Additional robust inventories for similar WWTP can leverage this work by applying the factors (kg of materials and energy per m of treated water) and guidance provided.
10Purpose: The objective was to provide comprehensive life cycle inventories for the construction and renovation 11 of sewers. A detailed inventory was provided with multiple options of pipe materials, diameters and site-specific 12 characteristics, and was embedded into an Excel®-based tool. The tool allows for life cycle evaluation of 13 different sewers. It was applied to determine the most important phases, processes and related parameters 14 involved in the construction and renovation of sewers from an environmental and economical perspective.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.