Overview of Resource Recovery-based Sustainable Water Systems:?Life Cycle Assessment Updates from US EPA’s Safe and Sustainable Water Resources Research Program
Citation:
Cashman, S., Cissy Ma, J. Garland, AND B. Morelli. Overview of Resource Recovery-based Sustainable Water Systems:?Life Cycle Assessment Updates from US EPA’s Safe and Sustainable Water Resources Research Program. ACLCA conference XVIII, Fort Collins, Colorado, September 25 - 28, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
The overview of various projects under EPA's SSWR system analysis research efforts focusing on the paradigm shift from traditional siloed water management to holistic strategies aimed at maximizing the use and recovery of water, energy, and nutrients.
Description:
The United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Safe and Sustainable Water Resources (SSWR) Program is building integrated sustainability assessments to compare the tradeoffs between current and future municipal water and wastewater services. This presentation provides an update on water treatment configurations investigated in SSWR’s life cycle assessments (LCA) and life cycle cost analyses (LCCA). Current studies focus on the paradigm shift from traditional siloed water management to holistic strategies aimed at maximizing the use and recovery of water, energy, and nutrients. Centralized water treatment life cycle inventory (LCI) unit process development with and without advanced treatment options, and with and without resource recovery options, are presented. LCI for decentralized non-potable water reuse systems, which collect and treat locally-available mixed wastewater and graywater for recycling applications such as irrigation or toilet flushing near their point of generation, are also discussed. Specific decentralized technologies investigated include aerobic membrane bioreactors (MBR) with and without thermal energy recovery, anaerobic MBRs, and recirculating vertical flow wetlands. The publicly available resources resulting from these studies improve LCA and LCCA modeling of current and emerging water treatment systems. The flexible framework of the municipal water treatment LCAs allows the models to be customized to regional and technological parameters of relevance for communities across the U.S.