Life cycle assessment of construction and renovation of sewer systems using a detailed inventory tool

Morera, Serni; Remy, Christian; Comas, Joaquím; Corominas, Lluís

doi:10.1007/s11367-016-1078-9

Cited by 21 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…This study found that the GWP of wastewater infrastructure was less than 2% of the global warming impact caused by the wastewater subsystem, which lies at the lower end of the reported range of 1%–30% ( Machado et al., 2007 ; Morera et al. 2016 , 2017 ; Ortiz et al., 2007 ; Renou et al., 2008 ., Risch et al., 2015 ; Vlasopoulos et al., 2006 ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…Various data sources including the existing ecoinvent database, equipment designs, manufacturer and supplier questionnaire responses, and real information from existing systems were utilized to estimate life cycle environmental impacts of infrastructure. This study, along with two previous studies ( Morera et al. 2016 , 2017 ), collected detailed information on construction materials, equipment, devices, and civil works for wastewater infrastructure.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Holistic analysis of urban water systems in the Greater Cincinnati region: (1) life cycle assessment and cost implications

et al. 2019

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Urban water and wastewater utilities are striving to improve their environmental and economic performances due to multiple challenges such as increasingly stringent quality criterion, aging infrastructure, constraining financial burden, growing urban population, climate challenges and dwindling resources. Growing needs of holistic assessments of urban water systems are required to identify systems-level cross-domain solutions. This study evaluated the life cycle environmental and economic impacts of urban water and wastewater systems with two utilities in Greater Cincinnati region as a case study. The scope of this study includes the entire urban water and wastewater systems starting from raw water acquisition for drinking water to wastewater treatment and discharge. The detailed process-based life cycle models were developed based on the datasets provided by local water and wastewater utilities. The life cycle assessment indicated that the operation and maintenance of drinking water distribution was a dominating contributor for energy consumption (43%) and global warming potential (41%). Wastewater discharge from the wastewater treatment plant contributed to more than 80% of the total eutrophication potential. The cost analysis determined that labor and maintenance cost (19%) for wastewater collection, and electricity cost (13%) for drinking water distribution were major contributors. Electricity purchased by the utility was the driver for the majority of impact categories assessed with the exception of eutrophication, blue water use, and metal depletion. Infrastructure requirements had a negligible influence on impact results, contributing less than 3% to most categories, with the exception of metal depletion where it led to 68% of total burdens. Sensitivity analysis showed that the life cycle environmental results were more sensitive to the choice of the electricity mixes and electricity consumption than the rest of input parameters such as chemical dosages, and infrastructure life time. This is one of the first comprehensive studies of the whole urban water system using real case data. It elucidates a bigger picture of energy, resource and cost distributions in a typical urban centralized water system. Inherent to a modern city as large population centers, a significant expenditure has to be invested to provide water services function (moving water, treating water/wastewater) in order to avoid human and environmental health problems. This study provides insights for optimization potentials of overall treatment efficiency and can serve as a benchmark for communities considering adoption of alternative water systems.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holistic analysis of urban water systems in the Greater Cincinnati region: (1) life cycle assessment and cost implications

et al. 2019

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“…Burning plastic waste such as PVC and HDPE pipes leads to emissions of volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, sulfur oxides, and large amounts of greenhouse gases, which increase the GWP (Al-Salem, Lettieri, and Baeyens 2009; Antelava et al 2019). The heating value of the incineration of HDPE is 41.84 MJ/kg, which is two times greater than that of PVC (Morera et al 2016). Therefore, as shown in Figure 4(a), the energy recovery from burning HDPE pipes can offset the adverse effects of incineration impacts associated with the CED indicator.…”

Section: Environmental Impacts Associated With the Renovation Stage Of Plastic Pipesmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…They indicated that 41% of global warming potential and 43% of energy consumption of the entire UWS were related to the operation and maintenance phase of the WDN. In contrast, some researchers have only focused on specific parts of UWSs, such as WWTPs (Awad, Alalm, and El-Etriby 2019;Garfí, Flores, and Ferrer 2017), WDNs (Sanjuandelmás et al 2014;Piratla et al 2012), and WWCs (Morera et al 2016;Vahidi et al 2016), to elucidate the significance of inventory data and compare the environmental impacts caused in different LCA phases. Risch et al (2015) conducted a comprehensive LCA for sewer systems and WWTPs considering the construction and operation phases.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental assessment of construction and renovation of water distribution networks considering uncertainty analysis

Hajibabaei

Hesarkazzazi

Lima

et al. 2020

Urban Water Journal

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Applying life cycle assessment (LCA) to water distribution networks (WDNs) usually requires considerable reliable data, and neglecting specific parts could significantly affect the reliability of results. In this paper, a comprehensive life cycle inventory dataset was collected to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with the construction and renovation stages of WDNs. The aim is to explore the effects of the availability of primary and secondary data on the LCA results based on analysis of uncertainties. The results indicate the importance of considering road construction processes, especially for small-tomedium-sized plastic pipes. Although recovering energy from the incineration of plastic pipes partially compensates for the impacts at the end of life, these incineration processes significantly affect the global warming potential. Finally, this study demonstrates that without considering all known information (e.g., network data), reliable LCA for WDNs can be performed, providing suggestions on which data to focus on in data collection process.

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“…Within the existing literature, articles have mainly focused on the environmental impacts of the construction or full life cycle of sewers (Morera et al. ; Vahidi et al. , ; Petit‐Boix et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing the Life Cycle of Sewers in Contrasting Cities through an Eco‐Efficiency Approach

Petit‐Boix

Arnal

Marín-Navarro

et al. 2017

J of Industrial Ecology

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Evaluating the sustainability of the urban water cycle is not straightforward, although a variety of methods have been proposed. Given the lack of integrated data about sewers, we applied the eco-efficiency approach to two case studies located in Spain with contrasting climate, population, and urban and sewer configurations. Our goal was to determine critical variables and life cycle stages and provide results for decision making. We used life cycle assessment and life cycle costing to evaluate their environmental and economic impacts. Results showed that both cities have a similar profile, albeit their contrasting features, that is, operation and maintenance, was the main environmental issue (50% to 70% of the impacts) and pipe installation registered the greatest economic capital expenditure (70% to 75%) due to labor. The location of the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) is an essential factor in our analysis mainly due to the topography effects (e.g., the annual pump energy was 13 times greater in Calafell). Using the eco-efficiency portfolio, we observed that sewers might be less eco-efficient than WWTPs and that we need to envision their design in the context of an integrated WWTP-sewer management to improve sewer performance. In terms of methodological approach, the bidimensional nature of eco-efficiency enables the benchmarking of product systems and might be more easily interpreted by the general public. However, there are still some constraints that should be addressed to improve communication, such as the selection of indicators discussed in the article. Keywords:eco-efficiency eco-innovation life cycle assessment (LCA) life cycle costing (LCC) water cycle wastewater Supporting information is linked to this article on the JIE website Conflict of interest statement: The authors have no conflict to declare.

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Life cycle assessment of construction and renovation of sewer systems using a detailed inventory tool

Cited by 21 publications

References 9 publications

Holistic analysis of urban water systems in the Greater Cincinnati region: (1) life cycle assessment and cost implications

Holistic analysis of urban water systems in the Greater Cincinnati region: (1) life cycle assessment and cost implications

Environmental assessment of construction and renovation of water distribution networks considering uncertainty analysis

Addressing the Life Cycle of Sewers in Contrasting Cities through an Eco‐Efficiency Approach

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