Life-cycle assessment of wastewater treatment plants

This thesis presents a general model for the carbon footprints analysis of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. In previous research, the issue of global warming is often related to traditional industries with high carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, such as power plants and transportation. However, the analyses of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have drawn increasing attention, due to the intensive greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from WWTPs. WWTPs have been listed in the 7 th place for both methane (CH 4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) total emissions. In addition, WWTPs indirectly contribute to a huge amount of CO2 emissions. The final results have shown that more than half of the carbon footprints from the La Gavia WWTP are from the indirect emissions of CO2, which is caused by the intensive energy consumption. The direct emissions of CH4 and N2O combined contribute more than 30 percent of GHG emission. The finally section of the thesis compares the environmental impacts of the La Gavia WWTP with case of no WWTP at all. It has been concluded that although the La Gavia WWTP increased the total carbon footprints, it has much better control of eutrophication potential (EP).

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Dong, Bo, M. Eng. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Eric E. Adams.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/73783

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/73783