Life Cycle Assessment of an intensive sewage treatment plant in Barcelona (Spain) with focus on energy aspects

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment was used to evaluate environmental impacts associated to a full-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Barcelona Metropolitan Area, with a treatment capacity of 2 million population equivalent, focussing on energy aspects and resources consumption. The wastewater line includes conventional pre-treatment, primary settler, activated sludge with nitrogen removal, and tertiary treatment; and the sludge line consists of thickening, anaerobic digestion, cogeneration, dewatering and thermal drying. Real site data were preferably included in the inventory. Environmental impacts of the resulting impact categories were determined by the CLM 2 baseline method. According to the results, the combustion of natural gas in the cogeneration engine is responsible for the main impact on Climate Change and Depletion of Abiotic Resources, while the combustion of biogas in the cogeneration unit accounts for a minor part. The results suggest that the environmental performance of the WWTP would be enhanced by increasing biogas production through improved anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge.

Performance of Wastewater Treatment Plants in Iraq: Life Cycle Assessment Approach

“…Although the use of LCA on wastewater management was covered by many studies during the last few years [12,13,14,15,16,17], there is still a need for more studies due to variation in spatial and temporal conditions on each case study, along with the difference in environmental concerns from one place to another. In developing countries, such studies can help evaluating the damages due to improper treatment.…”

Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Sewage Sludge (Biosolid) Management Options

“…Among them SimaPro is the most widely used model. Global warming, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical smog, human toxicity, ecotoxicity, depletion of abiotic resource, and terrestrial ecotoxicity are the fundamental impact categories of sludge management [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Life cycle assessment methodology is generally implemented for the main sludge management like dewatering, thickening, and anaerobic digestion [12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

Significance of anaerobic digestion as a source of clean energy in wastewater treatment plants

“…Besides pre-treatments, co-digestion, in its turn, optimizes anaerobic digestion increasing the organic loading rate (OLR) with other organic wastes with high methanogenic potential showing an extensive increase in biogas production [12][13][14]. In all cases, the optimization of energy recovery through biogas production enhances WWTPs environmental performance and lowers its carbon foot print [15,16].…”