Energy Requirement of Wastewater Treatment Plants: Unleashing the Potential of Microalgae, Biogas and Solar Power for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Sustainable energy legislation in the modern world is the primary strategy that has raised the benchmark for energy and environmental security globally. The rapid growth in the human population has led to rising energy needs, which are predicted to increase by at least 50% by 2030. Waste management and environmental pollution present the biggest challenge to developing countries. The improvement of energy efficiency while ensuring higher nutritional evacuation wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is a significant problem for many wastewater treatment plants. Some treatment techniques require high energy input, which makes them expensive to remediate water use. Pollutants like chemical pesticides, hydrocarbons, colorants (dyes), surfactants, and aromatic compounds are present in wastewater and are contributing to other problems. Israel consumes 10% of the global energy supply, significantly more than other countries. The lagoon and trickling filters are the most widely used technologies in South African WWTPs, where the electricity intensity ranges from 0.079 to 0.41 kWh.m-3 (Wang et al. 2016). Korea and India use almost the same energy (0.24 kWh.m-3). An estimated one-fifth of the energy used in a municipality’s WWTPs is used for overall public utilities, and this percentage is anticipated to rise by 20% over the next 15 years owing to expanding consumption of water and higher standards. In this review paper, we examined the potential for creating energy-self-sufficient WWTPs and discussed how much energy is currently consumed by WWTPs. The desirable qualities of microalgae, their production on a global level, technologies for treating wastewater with biogas and solar power, its developments, and issues for sustainable development are highlighted. The scientific elaboration of the mechanisms used for pollutant degradation using solar energy, as well as their viability, are the key issues that have been addressed.