Assessment of Municipal Effluent Reclamation Process Based on the Information of Cost Analysis and Environmental Impacts

Abstract

Water shortage has now become a global issue.Reclamation of the effluent from municipal wastewater treatment plantisfeasiblefor supplying the quick growth of water requirement. The objective of this study was to conduct both the cost analysis and environmental impactevaluationof two reclamation processes: sand filterultrafiltration -reverse osmosis(SF-UF-RO) and sand filter-electrodialysis reversal (SF-EDR). The results will serve as a reference for selecting the process in the scale -up construction works. Two processes were installed in a reclamation pilot plant in Futian Water Resource Recycling Center (TaichungCity, Taiwan)and operatedin parallel to evaluate their stability and product quality. The cost analysis was conducted to estimate the capital requirement of building large -scale plant for reclaiming the effluent. The cost ofland construction, mechanical witequipment and operation with maintenance were all considered in the analysis .On the other hand, t he environmental assessment of these processes has been realized by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The software Sima Pro 7.3 was used as the LCA analysis tool.Four different evaluation methods, including Eco - indicator 99, Ecopoints 97, Impact 2002+ and CML 2 baseline 2000, were applied. The results show that the water quality of SF -EDR has similar potential in reclaiming the effluent from municipalwater resource recycling center as SF-UF-RO. The costofSF- EDR is lower thanthat ofSF-UF-RO. In the environmental analysis , the LCA demonstrates that SF-EDR may create more impacts on the environment due to more