ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Greenhouse Gas Emission Mitigation
of Large-Scale Wastewater Treatment Plants
(WWTPs ): Optimization of Sludge Treatment
and Disposal
| 1 | Shanghai Urban Construction Design & Research Institute, 3447 Dongfang Rd, Shanghai 200120, PR China |
| 2 | College of Environmental Science &Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, PR China |
Submission date: 2020-01-13
Final revision date: 2020-03-15
Acceptance date: 2020-03-16
Online publication date: 2020-09-16
Publication date: 2020-11-10
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2021;30(1):955–964
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
Utilization and managementTreatment and managementBioenergy from biomassWastewater engineeringPolicies for environmentally sustainable development
ABSTRACT
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) contribute to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions. Due to the lack of estimation methods and operation data, whole plant characterization of
GHG emissions from WWTPs is still unclear. In this study, a set of methods were developed to calculate
direct, indirect and avoided GHG generated from large-scale WWTPs in China. The characteristic of
GHG emissions from two representative large-scale WWTPs situated in eastern China were investigated.
Results showed that the GHG emission of sludge treatment and disposal from two WWTPs accounted
for 76% and 65% of total emissions, respectively. This study investigated the GHG performance of
three typical sludge treatment and disposal routes including land application (R1), incineration (R2) and
landfilling (R3). R3 showed the highest GHG emission with 4322 kg CO2-eq/t dry sludge, followed by
R2 (3124 kg CO2-eq/t dry sludge) and R1 (489 kg CO2-eq/t dry sludge). Two energy recovery strategies
were evaluated in terms of their impacts on the GHG emissions from R1, R2 and R3. Strategy A and
B reduced significantly GHG emission from three routes. R3 exhibited the best performance of GHG
reduction with reduction rate of 51% (strategy A) and 77% (strategy B). The future direction of CO2
emission reduction is to minimize landfill disposal of sludge and to utilize sludge as a source of energy.
RELATED ARTICLE
We process personal data collected when visiting the website. The function of obtaining information about users and their behavior is carried out by voluntarily entered information in forms and saving cookies in end devices. Data, including cookies, are used to provide services, improve the user experience and to analyze the traffic in accordance with the Privacy policy. Data are also collected and processed by Google Analytics tool (more).
You can change cookies settings in your browser. Restricted use of cookies in the browser configuration may affect some functionalities of the website.
You can change cookies settings in your browser. Restricted use of cookies in the browser configuration may affect some functionalities of the website.