Environmental impacts assessment of industrial wastewater treatment system using electroless nickel plating and life cycle assessment approaches

Abstract

Wastewater treatment systems have been designed to minimize the environmental impacts of discharging untreated wastewater in natural aquatic systems. Different wastewater treatment options have different performance characteristics and different direct impacts to the environment. The main aim of this study is to assess and quantify the environmental impacts of an electroless nickel plating wastewater treatment plant in Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia. A life cycle assessment method, based on the international organization for standardization 14040 series framework, was used to assess the environmental impacts of the selected wastewater treatment plant. The ReCiPe life cycle impact assessment method attached to GaBi 4 software was used to assess the environmental impact of the selected industrial wastewater treatment plant. The results show that the existing chemical treatment process had the highest environmental impacts in terms of climate change with 1552.89 kg of CO2 and terrestrial acidification of 5.79 kg SO2 equivalent compared to the physical and biological treatment processes. Hence, two different scenarios, one utilizing chitosan and the other wet air oxidation (WAO) process, were formulated to reduce the environmental impacts of the conventional chemical wastewater treatment process. The impacts on the climate change using chitosan and WAO scenarios were both seen to have less than 110 kg CO2-equivalent emissions compared to the existing chemical process.