Ítem


Life cycle assessment applied to wastewater treatment: State of the art

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique to quantify the impacts associated with a product, service or process from cradle-to-grave perspective. Within the field of wastewater treatment (WWT) LCA was first applied in the 1990s. In the pursuit of more environmentally sustainable WWT, it is clear that LCA is a valuable tool to elucidate the broader environmental impacts of design and operation decisions. With growing interest from utilities, practitioners, and researchers in the use of LCA in WWT systems, it is important to make a review of what has been achieved and describe the challenges for the forthcoming years. This work presents a comprehensive review of 45 papers dealing with WWT and LCA. The analysis of the papers showed that within the constraints of the ISO standards, there is variability in the definition of the functional unit and the system boundaries, the selection of the impact assessment methodology and the procedure followed for interpreting the results. The need for stricter adherence to ISO methodological standards to ensure quality and transparency is made clear and emerging challenges for LCA applications in WWT are discussed, including: a paradigm shift from pollutant removal to resource recovery, the adaptation of LCA methodologies to new target compounds, the development of regional factors, the improvement of the data quality and the reduction of uncertainty. Finally, the need for better integration and communication with decision-makers is highlighted

The authors would like to thank the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ENDERUS, CTM-2009-13018) and the European Union for FEDER funding. Lluís Corominas holds a Juan de la Cierva scholarship (jci-2009-05604) and was awarded the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant PCIG9-GA-2011- 293535. Almudena Hospido belongs to the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC2010/37 and she acknowledges the NOVEDAR_Consolider project (CSD2007-00055) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science

Elsevier

Director: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Espanya)
Autor: Corominas Tabares, Lluís
Foley, Jeff
Guest, J.S.
Hospido, Almudena
Larsen, H.F.
Morera Carbonell, Sadurní
Shaw, Andrew R.
Resum: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique to quantify the impacts associated with a product, service or process from cradle-to-grave perspective. Within the field of wastewater treatment (WWT) LCA was first applied in the 1990s. In the pursuit of more environmentally sustainable WWT, it is clear that LCA is a valuable tool to elucidate the broader environmental impacts of design and operation decisions. With growing interest from utilities, practitioners, and researchers in the use of LCA in WWT systems, it is important to make a review of what has been achieved and describe the challenges for the forthcoming years. This work presents a comprehensive review of 45 papers dealing with WWT and LCA. The analysis of the papers showed that within the constraints of the ISO standards, there is variability in the definition of the functional unit and the system boundaries, the selection of the impact assessment methodology and the procedure followed for interpreting the results. The need for stricter adherence to ISO methodological standards to ensure quality and transparency is made clear and emerging challenges for LCA applications in WWT are discussed, including: a paradigm shift from pollutant removal to resource recovery, the adaptation of LCA methodologies to new target compounds, the development of regional factors, the improvement of the data quality and the reduction of uncertainty. Finally, the need for better integration and communication with decision-makers is highlighted
The authors would like to thank the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ENDERUS, CTM-2009-13018) and the European Union for FEDER funding. Lluís Corominas holds a Juan de la Cierva scholarship (jci-2009-05604) and was awarded the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant PCIG9-GA-2011- 293535. Almudena Hospido belongs to the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC2010/37 and she acknowledges the NOVEDAR_Consolider project (CSD2007-00055) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science
Accés al document: http://hdl.handle.net/2072/299570
Llenguatge: eng
Editor: Elsevier
Drets: Tots els drets reservats
Matèria: Aigües residuals -- Depuració
Sewage -- Purification
Títol: Life cycle assessment applied to wastewater treatment: State of the art
Tipus: info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Repositori: Recercat

Matèries

Autors