Life Cycle Assessment as an environmental evaluation tool for control strategies in wastewater treatment plants

Meneses, Montse; Concepcion, Henry; Vrečko, Darko; Vilanova, Ramón

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.05.057

Cited by 56 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Removing pollutants from wastewater entails consumption of energy, use of chemicals, and treatment of sludge in excess, which are operating expenses that cannot be compensated with economic profitable products. In addition, the operation of a WWTP involves environmental impacts such as direct emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) from biological processes, indirect emissions of GHG from energy use (electricity and heating), and sludge disposed to land and toxicity of chemicals [1,2]. Such environmental costs affect process sustainability, which plays an important role in process management in the actual context.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wastewater Treatment Plant Operation: Simple Control Schemes with a Holistic Perspective

et al. 2020

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In this paper, a control approach for improving the overall efficiency of a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) is presented. It consists of a cascaded control system that uses a global performance indicator as the controlled variable to drive the plant to operating conditions that satisfies trade-offs involved in the WWTP operation, improving the global performance of the plant. The selected global performance indicator is the N/E index that measures the ratio between the amount of nitrogenated compounds eliminated (kgN) and the energy (kWh) required to achieve that goal. This index links the variables of the activated sludge process with the energy consumed in the whole plant, thus the control strategy takes actions based on plantwide considerations. An external Proportional Integral (PI) controller changes the DO set point according to the N/E index and the basic dissolved oxygen (DO) control scheme in the activated sludge process follows this reference changes varying the aeration intensity. An outer loop with an event-based controller is used to compute the index values when the DO concentration is driven to excessively low limits, preventing long operation periods in this undesirable condition. Simple proportional integral controllers (PI) are used to adapt the strategy to the automation systems available in WWTPs. The implementation in the Benchmark Simulation Model 2 (BSM2) demonstrates the potential of the proposed approach. The results show the possibilities of the N/E index to be used as an indicator of global performance of WWTPs. It provides a link between water line objectives and energy consumption in the whole plant that can be exploited to introduce plantwide considerations in alternative control strategies formulated to drive the plant to operating conditions that optimize the overall process efficiency.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wastewater Treatment Plant Operation: Simple Control Schemes with a Holistic Perspective

et al. 2020

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“…Generalmente, la metodología LCA sirve como complemento dentro de un escenario de decisión multicriterio. Así por ejemplo, en Meneses et al (2015) y Meneses et al (2016) se aplica LCA para analizar los impactos generados por un conjunto de estrategias de operación de EDAR centradas en el benchmark BSM1. Se plantea LCA como una herramienta de ayuda a la evaluación de estrategias de operación mostrando como puede complementar a loś ındices de calidad y coste establecidos en las plataformas BSM.…”

Section: Análisis De Ciclo De Vida Y Evaluación Del Impacto Me-unclassified

Control en Estaciones Depuradoras de Aguas Residuales: Estado actual y perspectivas

Vilanova

Santín²,

Pedret³

2017

Revista Iberoamericana de Automática e Informática Industrial R

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ResumenEste trabajo constituye la segunda parte de una revisión de la problemática del control de estaciones depuradoras de aguas residuales (EDAR) para el tratamiento de agua residual urbana. Después de haber presentado en la primera parte las perspectivas correspondientes al modelado y simulación, en esta segunda parte nos centramos en el control de las mismas. Esta depuración se realiza, mayoritariamente, mediante procesos biológicos, concretamente, mediante el denominado proceso de fangos activados. El hecho de tratar con un proceso biológico conlleva una elevada complejidad tanto desde el punto de vista de modelado como, por supuesto, de control. Se revisa el control de EDAR desde su perspectiva histórica, como de los lazos de control más usuales, problemáticas que presentan y algunas de las soluciones propuestas. Se realiza también una revisión de la aplicación de las diferentes técnicas de control catalogándolas de acuerdo a su filosofía. Para terminar se ofrece una visión de las tendencia actuales y perspectivas de desarrollos futuros. Palabras Clave:Estaciones depuradoras de aguas residuales, benchmarking, control y operación

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“…In this One of the conclusions was that the literature demonstrates that to manage WWTPs in a sustainable way, the indicators, including operational costs, net energy and multiple environmental performance measures, including GHG, have to be considered. Recent studies have demonstrated the paramount importance of applying a plant-wide approach that includes environmental aspects [1,33,34].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is therefore shown how this can be performed from different points of view where the fact of adding a new, complementary, evaluation allows stakeholders either to reinforce a decision that could be made solely on the basis of the EQI/OCI tradeoff or to select one control strategy among the others. In contrast with the recent study conducted in [34], a global unique environmental evaluation is provided (instead of a category by category analysis) that allows one to easily evaluate control strategies that do have better environmental behavior. This joint analysis is presented on the basis of the mentioned BSM1 scenario.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This allows one to present the approach more from the methodological side than from the concrete numerical results; therefore, making this easily extensible to other concrete plants. The fact of using the water line scenario provided by BSM1 instead of a global plant proposal, such as in BSM2, as was done in [34], makes this generalization easier, as the control strategies are among the most widely used for the water line without further reference to other parts of the plant that otherwise may not be available (anaerobic digesters, thickeners, etc).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Joint Environmental and Economical Analysis of Wastewater Treatment Plants Control Strategies: A Benchmark Scenario Analysis

2016

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Abstract:In this paper, a joint environmental and economic analysis of different Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) control strategies is carried out. The assessment is based on the application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a method to evaluate the environmental impact and the Benchmark Simulation Model No. 1 (BSM1). The BSM1 is taken as the benchmark scenario used to implement the control strategies. The Effluent Quality Index (EQI) and the Overall Cost Index (OCI) are two indicators provided by BSM1 and used to evaluate the plant's performance from the effluent quality and the economic points of view, respectively. This work conducts a combined analysis and assessment of ten different control strategies defined to operate a wastewater treatment plant. This analysis includes the usual economic and performance indexes provided by BSM1 joined with the LCA analysis that determines the environmental impact linked to each one of the considered control strategies. It is shown how to get an overall evaluation of the environmental effects by using a normalized graphical representation that can be easily used to compare control strategies from the environmental impact point of view. The use of only the BSM1 indexes provides an assessment that leads to a clustering of control strategies according to the cost/quality tradeoff they show. Therefore, regarding the cost/quality tradeoff, all strategies in the same group are almost equal and do not provide an indication on how to proceed in order to select the appropriate one. It is therefore shown how the fact of adding a new, complementary, evaluation (LCA based) allows either to reinforce a decision that could be taken solely on the basis of the EQI/OCI tradeoff or to select one control strategy among the others.

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Life Cycle Assessment as an environmental evaluation tool for control strategies in wastewater treatment plants

Cited by 56 publications

References 31 publications

Wastewater Treatment Plant Operation: Simple Control Schemes with a Holistic Perspective

Wastewater Treatment Plant Operation: Simple Control Schemes with a Holistic Perspective

Control en Estaciones Depuradoras de Aguas Residuales: Estado actual y perspectivas

Joint Environmental and Economical Analysis of Wastewater Treatment Plants Control Strategies: A Benchmark Scenario Analysis

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