Prioritizing opportunities to advance sustainability of non-sewered sanitation systems through financing mechanisms and quantitative sustainable design

Safe sanitation is crucial to prevent the spread of diarrheal diseases and to reduce gender-related health disparities. Although it has been recognized as a universal right, the world is not on track to achieve universal coverage of safe sanitation. Lack of sanitation coverage in rural, geographically challenged, and rapidly increasing population density areas is particularly challenging due to cost and feasibility barriers to sewered connections. Non-sewered sanitation (NSS) systems are a potential solution to provide safely managed sanitation services according to strict wastewater treatment standards. The NEWgenerator, a NSS technology which uses an anaerobic membrane bioreactor, ion exchange, and electrochlorination, was simulated in QSDsan to determine the economic and environmental feasibility in different deployment contexts and to prioritize targeted improvements to advance the system sustainability. The configuration of the NEWgenerator using direct photovoltaic electricity had 1.2 cents higher cost at 0.113 [0.105 – 0.124] USD·cap-1·day-1 but 8.7 kg CO2-eq·cap-1·year-1 lower GHG emissions at 67.7 [38.5 – 113.6] kg CO2eq·cap-1·year-1 compared to the configuration using electricity from the grid. The use of location-specific parameters in a country-specific analysis for five countries (China, India, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda) resulted in variation in photovoltaic user cost and GHG emissions from 0.055 USD·cap-1·day-1 and 65.3 kg CO2eq·cap-1·year-1 in Uganda to 0.091 USD·cap-1·day-1 and 76.6 kg CO2eq·cap-1·year-1 in China. This research provides evidence of the NEWgenerator as a low-cost, low-emission, NSS backend technology with potential for resource recovery to increase access to safe sanitation globally. The financing of NSS technologies, such as the NEWgenerator, has not been readily explored due to its more recent development. Therefore, understanding of financing mechanisms such as subsidies, results-based, microfinance, blended finance, and market-based models and their characteristics to quantify their impact on life cycle costs is vital to efficiently allocate resources.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Environ Engr in Civil Engr

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Watabe, Shion

Contributors dc:contributor

• Guest, Jeremy S

• Non-sewered sanitation system (NSSS)
• multi-unit reinvented toilet (MURT)
• techno-economic analysis (TEA)
• life cycle assessment (LCA)
• decentralized sanitation
• on-site sanitation

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Shion Watabe

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115919

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115919