Life Cycle Assessment of a Domestic Wastewater Treatment Plant Simulated with Alternative Operational Designs

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool to evaluate the environmental impacts of domestic wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) operations. It involves thorough evaluation main characteristics or components environment, human health, and resources. However, literature date still lacking analysis on widely varied designs operational conditions full-scale WWTPs. The aim here was integrate analyses such as LCA, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy consumption, when considering WWTP, which can provide practical outputs aid decision-making optimum conditions. Russtmiya located in Iraq, considered case study. Three alternatives were proposed solutions improve WWTP’s performance, follows: (1) conventional activated sludge with sand filter (CAS), (2) nitrogen removal (CAS-N), (3) membrane bioreactor (MBR). operation investigated through modeling simulation using GPS-X 8.0.1 software. consumption each alternative estimated via GPS-X, while GHG emissions three different methods according intergovernmental panel climate change (IPCC), United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), OpenLCA software (1.10.3) used measure all impact categories at both midpoint endpoint levels various methods. As conclusion, comparing indicated that: MBR provided lowest moderate CAS best particularly aspects ozone depletion, global warming, change, where GHGs emission values had major contribution.