Energy Recovery from Wastewater Treatment Plants in the United States: A Case Study of the Energy-Water Nexus

Stillwell, Ashlynn S.; Hoppock, David C.; Webber, Michael E.

doi:10.3390/su2040945

Cited by 164 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…At the same time, the respective wastewater and sludge treatment processes can provide energy and other resources [17][18][19][20][21]. Therefore, in addition to their main function of ensuring public health and safety as well as environmental protection, WWTPs can be considered as essential energy and resource cells.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Thermal Energy Resource Potentials from Wastewater Treatment Plants

et al. 2015

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Wastewater heat recovery via heat exchangers and heat pumps constitutes an environmentally friendly, approved and economically competitive, but often underestimated technology. By introducing the spatial dimension in feasibility studies, the results of calculations change considerably. This paper presents a methodology to estimate thermal energy resource potentials of wastewater treatment plants taking spatial contexts into account. In close proximity to settlement areas, wastewater energy can ideally be applied for heating in mixed-function areas, which very likely have a continuous heat demand and allow for an increased amount of full-load hours compared to most single-use areas. For the Austrian case, it is demonstrated that the proposed methodology leads to feasible results and that the suggested technology might reduce up to 17% of the Austrian global warming potential of room heating. The method is transferrable to other countries as the input data and calculation formula are made available. A broad application of wastewater energy with regard to spatial structures and spatial development potentials can lead to (1) increasing OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 12989 energy efficiency by using a maximum of waste heat and (2) a significant reduction of (fossil) energy consumption which results in a considerable reduction of the global warming potential of the heat supply (GWP) if electricity from renewables is used for the operation of heat pumps.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Thermal Energy Resource Potentials from Wastewater Treatment Plants

et al. 2015

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“…In all of these studies, energy and water systems are treated separately. Studies that do treat energy and water systems together focus on activities at the industrial generation and municipal distribution scales (e.g., Stillwell et al 2010, Ackerman and Fisher 2013, Nair et al 2014. Few studies focus on how to integrate these systems for more efficient and effective operation at the building level.…”

Section: Current Building Design At the Few Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resilient by design: the case for increasing resilience of buildings and their linked food-energy-water systems

Tien

2018

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

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The resilience of buildings and food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) to natural or manmade disruptions are closely linked. The resilience of a building goes beyond the safety of its structural elements and must include the resilience of its supporting systems and the services they supply. The resilience of FEWS, in turn, can increase through design elements of a building that affect generation and storage of FEW resources. In this commentary, I discuss increasing the resilience of buildings and their linked FEWS-improving their resistance, absorption, restoration, and adaptive capacities-through new integrated systems design practices. I begin with a discussion of the current state of building design at the FEW nexus. I then use the prior establishment and current use of sustainability design objectives as an analogue to developing and implementing resilience design objectives. I review progress and limitations of specific drivers for increasing resilient design practices, including economic incentives, regulations, extralegal programs and initiatives, and societal incentives. My recommendations for leveraging these drivers to increase resilient design include: for economic incentives, quantify the costs and benefits to make the business case for resilience; for formal regulations, specify increased building requirements with performance-based resilience objectives; for extralegal initiatves, integrate these resilience objectives with existing certification programs and award designs that address FEWS as an integrated network rather than as disparate systems; and for societal incentives, demonstrate public benefit to shift societal perceptions of resilience. Together, these actions will motivate the design of more resilient building and FEW systems to increase their longevity, performance, and robustness. Keywords:Resilience; buildings; food-energy-water systems (FEWS); design objectives; integrated systems; performance-based design; design practices and incentives School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, US itien@ce.gatech.edu Introduction Food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) are essential for the functioning, safety, and security of society. They provide critical resources and services for the population of a community. They are also characterized by interconnections and interdependencies, which can both support the performance of these systems, e.g., if outputs from one system can be leveraged for use in multiple systems; or expose the systems to additional vulnerabilities, e.g., if failures in one system cascade into losses for connected systems.Buildings are also critical to daily life. We live the majority of our lives in buildings, with Americans spending on average 87% of their time in enclosed buildings (Klepeis et al. 2001). Buildings and FEWS are inextricably linked, particularly for energy and water systems. Buildings serve as the final distribution points for most municipal energy and water systems. Once energy and water resources are generated...

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“…The wastewater treatment and water sectors also consume vast amounts of energy, primarily in the form of electricity, for water supply and treatment. [17,30] The old adage that "sewage flows downhill" partly reflects the reality of dense, solid-laden water streams flowing downward from mountaintop castles to the villages below is a nod towards the vast energy requirements that would be used to move wastewater the other direction. The energy required to produce, treat and distribute water varies depending on the source (see Table 3).…”

Section: Total Water Withdrawals [2000]mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[31,78] In fact, more advanced sludge treatment and processing can consume energy in the range of 30-80% of total wastewater plant energy use. [36] POTWs that treat wastewater sludge through anaerobic digestion can also produce energy through the creation of methane-rich biogas, a renewable fuel that can be used to generate up to 50% of the POTW's electricity needs [30,37].…”

Section: Total Water Withdrawals [2000]mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Nexus of Energy and Water in the United States

Webber¹,

Hafemeister²,

Kammen³

et al. 2011

AIP Conference Proceedings

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Abstract. This manuscript presents an overview and a relevant framework for thinking about the nexus of energy and water. Here are the key points of this article:• Energy and water are interrelated; we use energy for water and water for energy • The Energy-water relationship is under strain, and that strain introduces cross-sectoral vulnerabilities (that is, a water constraint can become an energy constraint, and an energy constraint can induce a water constraint) • Trends imply that this strain will be exacerbated because of 1) growth in total demand for energy and water, primarily driven by population growth, 2) growth in per capita demand for energy and water, primarily driven by economic growth, 3) global climate change, which will distort the availability of water, and 4) policy choices, by which we are selecting more waterintensive energy and more energy-intensive water

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Energy Recovery from Wastewater Treatment Plants in the United States: A Case Study of the Energy-Water Nexus

Cited by 164 publications

References 7 publications

Mapping Thermal Energy Resource Potentials from Wastewater Treatment Plants

Mapping Thermal Energy Resource Potentials from Wastewater Treatment Plants

Resilient by design: the case for increasing resilience of buildings and their linked food-energy-water systems

The Nexus of Energy and Water in the United States

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