Life cycle assessment of waste water treatment plants in Ireland
McNamara, GregORCID: 0000-0003-1150-5111, Horrigan, Matthew, Phelan, Thomas, Fitzsimons, LornaORCID: 0000-0002-8783-3755, Delauré, YanORCID: 0000-0002-7151-9278, Corcoran, Brian, Doherty, Edelle and Clifford, EoghanORCID: 0000-0001-6283-1246
(2014)
Life cycle assessment of waste water treatment plants in Ireland.
In: South East European Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems, 29 June - 3 July 2014, Ohrid, Macedonia.
The European Water Act 91/271/EEC introduced a series of measures for the purpose of protecting the environment from the adverse effects of effluent discharge from Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTP). There are environmental costs associated with attaining the required level of water quality set out in the act such as, emissions from energy production, ecotoxicity from sludge application to land. The goal of this study is to assess these costs. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been the analytical tool used to evaluate the environmental loadings. The CML 2001 Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methodology has been adopted and implemented using GaBi 6.0 LCA software. Two plants of varying size and location were chosen for the study. The study found that energy consumption and sludge application to land are the largest contributors to the environmental impact associated with waste water treatment.
Metadata
Item Type:
Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Event Type:
Conference
Refereed:
Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:
Wastewater treatment; Life cycle assessment; Energy; Sludge disposal; Anaerobic digestion