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Comparative assessment of sewage sludge disposal alternatives in Mashhad: a life cycle perspective

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Abstract

Municipal wastewater treatment facilities produce a lot of sludge which is concentrated with different pollutants. The sustainable design of the sludge disposal alternatives is of crucial importance for touristic cities like Mashhad in Iran. Increasing sludge generation and its accumulation in the city and more stringent legislations highlight the challenge of sludge disposal, recently. This study compares different alternatives to reach maximum possible environmental benefits as well as the most cost-effective technologies. In this study, life cycle analysis (LCA) assesses different scenarios for disposal of sewage sludge which is aerobically treated and dewatered for two real case studies. Alteymore and KhinArab are wastewater treatment units in the city. The scenarios include incineration, composting, and landfilling alternatives. The incineration and landfill scenarios are the least interesting solutions according to different life cycle impact categories. The heavy metals’ emission to the soil worsens their impacts. Also, lifecycle cost analysis reveals that composting scenario is more cost-saving than others. However, main disadvantage of the composting scenario is its contribution in freshwater eutrophication. To move towards sustainability, the composting scenario is here determined as the best scenario for sludge disposal in Mashhad.

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Notes

  1. This treatment plant is also named Al-Teymour treatment plant.

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Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments that help them a lot to improve the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Energy Systems Engineering Group, Department of Energy Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Azadi Ave, P.O. Box 14565-114, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

    Fatemeh Rostami & Akram Avami

  2. Water and Wastewater Company of Mashhad, Mashhad, Islamic Republic of Iran

    Seyyed Mohammad Tafazzoli & Samaneh Tavakoli Aminian

Authors
  1. Fatemeh Rostami
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  2. Seyyed Mohammad Tafazzoli
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  3. Samaneh Tavakoli Aminian
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  4. Akram Avami
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Correspondence to Akram Avami.

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Responsible editor: Philippe Loubet

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Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 5 The inventory data for landfill scenario (Nocita, Lombardi et al. 2016, Lombardi, Nocita et al. 2017)
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Table 6 The inventory data for incineration scenario (Sendoh Akwo 2008, Lombardi, Nocita et al. 2017)
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Table 7 The inventory data for the composting scenario (Sendoh Akwo 2008, Nocita, Lombardi et al. 2016, Lombardi, Nocita et al. 2017)
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Table 8 Emission factor and emitted amounts of elements in compost application (Sendoh Akwo 2008, Lombardi, Nocita et al. 2017)
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Table 9 Nutrients decline and recycle coefficients during composting (Sendoh Akwo 2008, Nocita, Lombardi et al. 2016)
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Appendix 2

Table 10 Results of ReCiPe midpoint, ReCiPe endpoint, and CML impact categories for sludge disposal scenarios of Alteymore plant without normalization
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Table 11 Results of ReCiPe midpoint, ReCiPe endpoint, and CML impact categories for sludge disposal scenarios of KhinArab plant without normalization
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Rostami, F., Tafazzoli, S.M., Aminian, S.T. et al. Comparative assessment of sewage sludge disposal alternatives in Mashhad: a life cycle perspective. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 315–333 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-06709-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-06709-3

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