Life Cycle Assessment and Its Application in Wastewater Treatment: A Brief Overview

Abstract

This paper provides a brief review on wastewater treatment system and the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) for assessing its environmental performance. An extensive review regarding the geographical relevance of LCA for WWTPs, and the evaluation of sustainable wastewater treatment by LCA in both developed and developing countries are also discussed. The objective of the review is to identify knowledge gap, for the improvement of the LCA application and methodology to WWTPs. A total of 35 published articles related to wastewater treatment (WWT) and LCA from international scientific journals were studied thoroughly and summarised from 2006 to 2022. This review found that there is lack of studies concerning LCA of WWTPs that consider specific local criteria especially in the developing countries. Thus, it is important to: (1) assess the influence of seasonality (i.e., dry and wet seasons) on the environmental impact of WWT, (2) investigate environmental impacts from WWTPs in developing countries focusing on the site-specific inventory data, and (3) evaluate environmental sustainability of different processes for upgrading the wastewater treatment system. The environmental impact and cost assessment aspects are crucial for the sustainable development of WWTP. Therefore, environmental impacts must be thoroughly assessed to provide recommendation for future policy and for the water industry in determining environmental trade-offs toward sustainable development.

Life Cycle Assessment of an Innovative Combined Treatment and Constructed Wetland Technology for the Treatment of Hexachlorocyclohexane-Contaminated Drainage Water in Hajek in the Czech Republic

“…The authors of this study conducted a literature review covering LCA analyses of wastewater treatment systems using the conventional method. In many cases, discrepancies in the use of functional units, system boundaries, and LCA methodology undermined the comparison being made [16][17][18][19][20][21][22] with the use of wetlands [23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

Environmental Impact Analysis in 3x10 MW Coal Fired Power Plant Through Life Cycle Assessment

“…LCA has been employed to evaluate environmental impacts across various sectors, including waste treatment, petroleum energy production, and other industrial processes. (Dastjerdi et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2020;Rashid et al, 2023). Research on life cycle assessment (LCA) conducted on coal-fired thermal power plants in India indicates CO 2 emissions ranging from 0.263 to 0.27 CO 2 eq when employing ESP and carbon capture storage (Malode et al, 2023).…”

Application of integrated LCA-GIS model in the agricultural sector: A brief overview

“…The agricultural sector is vital for the world's economy which faces an increasing demand for agricultural products due to global population growth and thus continues to globally cause inauspicious environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, eutrophication, and acidification which are the major contributors to global warming from the various production/cultivation processes. The agriculture sector significantly contributes to 13.5% of the global emission of greenhouse gases with a respective dispersion of CO2, NO2, and CH4 [1]. Other environmental concerns from the agricultural processes apart from those mentioned above are, water and soil pollution, raw material, and energy consumption normally caused by types of machinery, fertilizers, and pesticides [2], [3].…”