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Chemical Flow Analysis for Tracking Industrial Transfers to Publicly Owned Treatment Works
Citation:
Perez, D., Gerardo J. Ruiz-Mercado, T. Abichou, Raymond L. Smith, W. Barrett, M. Gonzalez, AND D. Meyer. Chemical Flow Analysis for Tracking Industrial Transfers to Publicly Owned Treatment Works. 2023 ISSST Conference Meeting, Fort Collins, CO, June 13 - 15, 2023.
Impact/Purpose:
Chemicals of concern like the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) listed chemicals pose an unreasonable risk to human health and the environment across their life cycle stages. Wastewater transfers from industrial sources to publicly owned treatment works (POTW) are end-of-life (EoL) stage pathways of critical importance for performing risk assessment due to possible exposure scenarios to such chemicals of concern. This work couples internationally recognized wastewater treatment models to produce datasets representing the partition of these chemicals into solid, gaseous, and liquid compartments. Also, our model simulates physical, biological, and chemical reactions, dynamic and steady-state conditions, and chemical flow analysis (CFA) used to track and estimate such partitions. The proposed framework can be used to evaluate environmental releases from each process unit within a POTW. Also, the framework collects life-cycle inventory (LCI) and identifies potential exposure scenarios for chemicals of concern at an EoL stage.
Description:
Chemicals of concern may pose an unreasonable risk to human health and the environment across their life cycle stages. Risk assessment at the end-of-life (EoL) stage is of critical importance due to differing chemical management methods that result in possible exposure scenarios. Wastewater transfers from industrial sources to publicly owned treatment works (POTW) is an EoL scenario that requires further risk assessment due to the release of toxic chemicals at levels that would affect the quality of waters receiving treated effluents. This work proposes to assist EPA’s life cycle risk assessment using a systems design or “bottom-up” approach to design, model, and simulate processes within a POTW that consider the fate and transport of chemicals of concern. Our work couples internationally recognized wastewater treatment models, representing specific unit processes, to produce datasets that represent the partition of these chemicals into solid, gaseous, and liquid compartments. Our mathematical model, on a processing unit and plantwide scale, simulates physical, biological, and chemical reactions, dynamic and steady-state conditions, and chemical flow analysis (CFA) used to track and estimate such partitions. The proposed framework can be used to evaluate environmental releases from each process unit within a POTW. Applying CFA methods coupled with facility-reported datasets (e.g., TRI[1], NEI[2], Biennial Reports, DMR[3], RCRA[4], NPDES[5], etc.), the framework can be used for collecting life-cycle inventory (LCI) and identifying potential exposure scenarios for chemicals of concern at an EoL stage. [1] Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) program [2] National Emissions Inventory (NEI) [3] Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) [4] Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) [5] National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES)