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Life Cycle Assessment of a Community-Based Wastewater Treatment and Resource Recovery System: Sewage Heat Recovery and MBR for Water Reuse
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- Author / Creator
- Cabling, Ludwig Paul B
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Municipal sewage contains significant embedded resources in the form of chemical and thermal energy. Recent developments in sustainable technology has pushed for the integration of resource recovery from household wastewater to achieve net zero energy consumption and carbon neutral communities. Sewage heat recovery and fit-for-purpose water reuse are options to optimize the resource recovery potential of municipal wastewater. This study presents a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) focused on global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication potential (EUP), and human health – carcinogenic potential (HHCP) of an integrated sewage heat recovery and water reuse system for a hypothetical community of 30,000 people. Conventional space and water heating components generally demonstrated the highest GWP contribution between the different system components evaluated. Sewage heat recovery-based district heating offered better environmental performance overall. Lower impact contributions were demonstrated by scenarios with membrane bioreactor (MBR)/chlorination prior to water reuse applications compared to scenarios that use more traditional water and wastewater treatment technologies and discharge. The LCA findings show that integrating MBR wastewater treatment and water reuse to a district heating schema could provide additional environmental savings at a community scale.
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- Graduation date
- Spring 2021
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Master of Science
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- License
- This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.