Methodological framework for wastewater treatment plants delivering expanded service: Economic tradeoffs and technological decisions

Abstract

With emerging decarbonization to deploy more integrated waste management, there is a burgeoning need for re-managing waste-related infrastructures in urban environments. Wastewater treatment plants are key contributors to expanded environmental services, but relevant technological decisions and economic tradeoffs have to be assessed from a systems perspective. This study provides a methodological framework that consolidates the multiple technological and economic aspects of system retrofitting for such an evaluation purpose. Complex leachate from refuse transfer stations has been recently identified as the decarbonization roadblock of urban waste management, and it was chosen for investigations by this new methodological approach. The system impacts by complex leachate on the existing facilities were validated by experimental trials. To derive the financial outlooks for decision making, the evaluation matrix includes the quantitative impacts of bioenergy profiles, energy balance analysis of biogas utilization methods, needs of system retrofitting, economic factors, and their uncertainties. Due to the detected inefficiency of bioenergy recovery, bioinformatic analysis was proceeded for understanding the underlying mechanism to propose a mitigation solution. Overall, the methodological framework can provide a quantitative assessment of the centralized capability of wastewater treatment plants for systems planning in the new policy agenda of urban decarbonization, where the methodological potentials of expanded framework applications are also highlighted.