Environmental assessment of an Indian municipal wastewater treatment plant in Rajasthan

Abstract

Wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) reduces environmental load by improving the quality of effluent sewage water. A wastewater treatment plant during its operation, consumes energy for circulation and aeration of water, utilise chemicals such as anti-foaming agents, coagulants and flocculants and release gaseous emissions and solid waste (sludge). It is necessary to consider the environmental impacts of all these activities realistically. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to calculate the potential environmental impact associated with the operation of WWTP. In this study, LCA was carried out for a WWTP located in Jaipur in the state of Rajasthan, India. CML 2001 method was used for the life cycle impact assessment using GaBi 8.0 software. The objective of this study is to quantify the environmental impact associated with the operation of a WWTP and to identify the environmental hotspots among different processes within the WWTP. The LCA result of the WWTP reveals that the sequencing batch reactor process 1 and 2 have the highest environmental impacts within the WWTP as this process consumes the highest amount of electricity whereas the pretreatment process has the least environmental impact.

Keywords

• wastewater treatment plants (wwtps)
• life cycle assessment (lca)
• gabi
• environmental hotspot