Abstract
The European Water Act 91/271/EEC introduced a series of measures for the purpose of protecting the environment from the adverse effects of effluent discharge from Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTP). There are environmental costs associated with attaining the required level of water quality set out in the act such as, emissions from energy production, ecotoxicity from sludge application to land. The goal of this study is to assess these costs. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been the analytical tool used to evaluate the environmental loadings. The CML 2001 Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methodology has been adopted and implemented using GaBi 6.0 LCA software. Two plants of varying size and location were chosen for the study. The study found that energy consumption and sludge application to land are the largest contributors to the environmental impact associated with waste water treatment.
Highlights
On the 21st of May 1991 the European Economic Community (EEC) issued the 91/271/EEC Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD) that would set in motion a series of reforms to protect the environment from the adverse effects of effluent being discharged from Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) [1]
This study found that there were two main contributors to environmental loading outside of final effluent discharge: the energy that goes into treating the influent and the sludge disposal
The purpose of the study was to assess the environmental performance of two WWTPs in Ireland
Summary
On the 21st of May 1991 the European Economic Community (EEC) issued the 91/271/EEC Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD) that would set in motion a series of reforms to protect the environment from the adverse effects of effluent being discharged from Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) [1]. One of the key recommendations made in the directive is that WWTPs serving agglomerations greater than 2,000 PE† discharging final effluent into freshwater and estuaries, and all other agglomerations greater than 10,000 PE are to employ secondary treatment‡ This requirement presented local and national authorities with the challenge of firstly assessing the state of their respective sewage systems, before bringing standards to required levels. The project involved four different approaches: development of a benchmarking tool, process auditing and optimization, exergy analysis and environmental performance assessment. It is the findings from the latter of these four approaches that is the subject of this study
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