Life Cycle Assessment of Upgrading Primary Wastewater Treatment Plants to Secondary Treatment Including a Circular Economy Approach

Abstract

<jats:p> Although significant progress has been achieved in the field of environmental impact assessment in many engineering disciplines, the impact of wastewater treatment plants has not yet been well integrated. In light of this remarkable scientific progress, the outputs of the plants as treated water and clean sludge have become potential sources of irrigation and energy, not a waste. The aim of this study is to assess the environmental impacts of upgrading the wastewater treatment plants from primary to secondary treatment. The Lifecycle Assessment Framework (ISO 14040 and 14044) was applied using GaBi Software. Abu Rawash wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) has been taken as a case study. Two scenarios were studied, Scenario 1 is the current situation of the WWTP using the primary treatment units and Scenario 2 is upgrading the WWTP by adding secondary treatment units. The study highlighted the influence and cumulative impact of upgrading all the primary WWTPs in Egypt to secondary treatment. With the high amount of energy consumed in the aeration process, energy recovery methods were proposed to boost the circular economy concept in Abu Rawash WWTP in order to achieve optimal results from environmental and economic perspectives. </jats:p>

Identifying Problems in Watering Ponds with Different Purposes

“…There is not a strong network of wastewater treatment plants yet, and these residues consequently arrive to watering ponds altering their chemical and microbiological balance [42]. The efficiency of wastewater treatment plants has been already assessed in neighbor semi-arid areas such as Egypt [43], but it still lacks consistent works carried out in Algeria to properly understand the magnitude of the problem since the convenience of integrating fishing farming and agriculture has positively assessed [14].…”

A life cycle approach to environmental assessment of wastewater and sludge treatment processes

“…Thermal energy recovery was critical in achieving a net‐zero LCA analysis. Another study by Morsy et al (2020) compares the two scenarios: Scenario 1, the existing WWTP at Abu‐Rawash providing only primary treatment; and Scenario 2, adopting the secondary treatment unit. A number of LCA studies analysed practical application as case studies including water and WWT systems, water recycling facilities, and sludge treatment plants (Alyaseri & Zhou, 2017; Pasqualino et al, 2009; Singh et al, 2016; Tillman et al, 1998).…”

Comprehensive Assessment for the Potential Environmental Impacts of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Downstream Countries: Itaipu Dam in the Rearview Mirror

“…It is very important to have Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) studies for the GERD project, which are required by law and an obligation before a country develops any transboundary project that necessitates it (Morsy et al, 2020). Although it is quite straight forward to expect the various negative impacts of GERD on the environment in Ethiopia and the downstream countries, the magnitude of the effect is not very easy to determine due to multiple and complicated factors affecting them (Wheeler et al, 2020) such as the rainfall and discharge from the GERD during the filling period, how quickly Ethiopia is planning to fill the reservoir, how much Electric power is planned to be extracted from the dam, which depends on the extent of the grid development in Ethiopia (Eldardiry & Hossain, 2021), how building the dam is going to affect Sudan withdrawal (Siddig et al, 2020), the water level in the High Aswan Dam (HAD) reservoir before GERD, and how HAD will be operated during the filling of GERD reservoir.…”