Environmental performance of a photovoltaic brackish water reverse osmosis for a cleaner desalination process: A case study

Abstract

Reverse osmosis (RO) membrane-based desalination system with various configurations has emerged as a critical option for reclaiming brackish water. This study aims to evaluate the environmental performance of the combination of photovoltaic-reverse osmosis (PVRO) membrane treatment system via life cycle assessment (LCA). The LCA was calculated using SimaPro v9 software with ReCiPe 2016 methodology and EcoInvent 3.8 database following the ISO 14040/44 series. The findings identified the chemical and electricity consumption at both the midpoint and endpoint level across all impact categories with terrestrial ecotoxicity (27.59 kg 1,4-DCB), human non-carcinogenic toxicity potential (8.06 kg 1,4-DCB) and GWP (4.33 kg CO2 eq) as the highest impacts for the PVRO treatment. As for the endpoint level, the desalination system affected human health, ecosystems and resources at 1.39 × 10−5 DALY, 1.49 × 10−7 species·year and 0.25 USD2013 respectively. The construction phase for the overall PVRO treatment plant was also assessed and impacted less significantly compared to the operational phase. Three different scenarios (i.e. S1: Grid input (Baseline); S2: Photovoltaic (PV)/Battery; S3: PV/Grid) based on different sources of electricity used were also compared as electricity consumption is one of the significant impacts in the operational phase. The study found that S2 had the lowest environmental impact, while S1 contributed the highest when both midpoint and endpoint approaches are considered.