The eco-efficiency assessment of wastewater treatment plants in the city of Mashhad using emergy and life cycle analyses

Alizadeh, Sadegh; Zafari-koloukhi, Hamid; Rostami, Ali Shokouhi; Rouhbakhsh, Masoud; Avami, Akram

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119327

Cited by 57 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Amaral et al [75] reviewed the emergy theory and practice in terms of energy sustainability, and Chen et al [76] and He et al [77] performed an extensive bibliographic study to provide an overview of the current trends in emergy research. The simplicity of the computing techniques led to the dissemination of emergy to built-environmental areas and its combination with other evaluation frameworks, such as the life-cycle assessment (LCA) [78,79], or ecological footprint (EF) [80,81].…”

Section: Emergy Approach To Building Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lei et al [101], Lee et al [102], and Huang et al [103] further attempted to evaluate the large-scale emergy contents of an entire city/city block and supported the metabolic understanding of urban development. Urban studies using emergy have recently extended to specific topics of urban system configuration, such as the influence of public services on the pattern of residential population [104] or municipal wastewater treatment [81] (Table 2).…”

Section: Less Complex High Efficiency Low Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond Energy Efficiency in Building Sustainability: A Review of Emergy and Information for Systemically Characterizing Building Performance

Yi¹,

Mehrotra²

2022

Highlights Sustain.

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Sustainable buildings tend to maximize power and information rather than efficiency. The multidimensional concepts and tools provided by systems ecology and thermodynamics aid the understanding of building performance and sustainability as part of the global and complex thermodynamic phenomena in living systems—energy is not concentrated, but it flows, increasing the flow rate of useful energy. From such an extended macroscopic perspective, this paper addresses holistic eco-systemic criteria of building performance evaluation, focusing on emergy (spelled with an "m") and information—the two critical indices of extensive and intensive analysis. Emergy aggregates the utmost and upstream energetic impacts, whereas information evaluates the structural pattern of the energy-flow distribution. These indices are theoretically correlated under the principles of ecological energy transformation and are often practically compatible. To clarify the definitions and appropriate scientific contexts of the new indices for environmental building studies, we review information theory, ecological theorems, and a few pioneering studies. Emergy and information have a great potential for advanced environmental building analysis, but building-scale implementation of emergy, information, and system principles remains a scientific challenge. The findings call for further research into the improvement of building-specific emergy/information data and reliable evidence of the analogy between building and open living systems.

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Section: Emergy Approach To Building Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Less Complex High Efficiency Low Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Energy Efficiency in Building Sustainability: A Review of Emergy and Information for Systemically Characterizing Building Performance

Yi¹,

Mehrotra²

2022

Highlights Sustain.

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show abstract

“…Taking a new typical wastewater treatment plant as an example, a series of integrated emergy indicators was used to evaluate the environmental sustainability of the wastewater treatment system regarding its unique technical production process [29]. Eco-efficiency indices based on emergy and LCA were used to assess the sustainable use of two wastewater treatment plants [30]. A wastewater treatment system of straw pulp papermaking and a wastewater treatment system of printing, dyeing, and papermaking were selected to evaluate the sustainability level of wastewater treatment systems in China, based on a hybrid neural network and emergy analysis framework [31].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study on the Choice of Wastewater Treatment Process Based on the Emergy Theory

Wang

Liu

et al. 2021

Processes

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With the increase in industrialization and urbanization, water pollution has become increasingly serious, and wastewater treatment has become a common step in preventing this. For a greater understanding of the sustainability of different wastewater treatment systems, two processes, Anaerobic Baffled Reactor + Anaerobic-Anoxic-Oxic and Anaerobic Baffled Reactor + Cyclic Activated Sludge System, were selected, and their sustainability was evaluated based on three indicators, namely emergy yield ratio, environmental load rate, and emergy sustainability development index, according to emergy theory. The results show that the emergy yield ratio and environmental load rate of the ABR + CASS process were lower than those of the ABR + A2/O process, and the emergy sustainability development index of the ABR + CASS process was higher than that of the ABR + A2/O process, showing better sustainability. The research methods and findings of this study play an important role for decision makers in selecting sustainable wastewater treatment processes.

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“…Porter et al (1995) evidencian que estos impactos ambientales deben verse como ineficiencias de los procesos, debido a que entre mayor sea el impacto, mayor serán las pérdidas que se obtienen y por ende el sistema debería ser revisado para mejorar su eficiencia. De esta forma, la eficiencia aquí relacionada juega también un papel importante en el sentido económico, debido a que, si se mejoran las relaciones de consumo y producción que se están desarrollando, se genera un ahorro o un gasto, según sea el caso, en los insumos que se requieren (Alizadeh et al, 2020;Corcelli et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

Assessing the sustainability of grass-based livestock husbandry in Hulun Buir, China

Zhao

Chen

Bai

et al. 2020

Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C

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The eco-efficiency assessment of wastewater treatment plants in the city of Mashhad using emergy and life cycle analyses

Cited by 57 publications

References 37 publications

Beyond Energy Efficiency in Building Sustainability: A Review of Emergy and Information for Systemically Characterizing Building Performance

Beyond Energy Efficiency in Building Sustainability: A Review of Emergy and Information for Systemically Characterizing Building Performance

Study on the Choice of Wastewater Treatment Process Based on the Emergy Theory

Assessing the sustainability of grass-based livestock husbandry in Hulun Buir, China

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