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Reconciling water circularity through reverse osmosis for wastewater treatment for a hyper-arid climate: a life cycle assessment

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Abstract

Aiming to reconcile the water cycle and combating water scarcity, this study investigates the tradeoffs of upgrading tertiary wastewater treatment with ultrafiltration (UF) membrane, and reverse osmosis (RO) using life cycle assessment (LCA). The tradeoffs investigate if the higher burden of UF/RO is justified by providing higher quality of water returned to the cycle for arid regions that rely on seawater desalination. The tertiary treatment wastewater inventories are built based on activated sludge by vertical loop reactor (VLR), rim clarifiers and ultraviolet (UV) disinfection. The inventories for the UF/RO trains are build according to the largest wastewater treatment facility worldwide. Open-loop, and consequential modeling principles were applied using the credited municipal water, while considering the local electricity-water cogeneration system for a hyper-arid region. The analyses are conducted on two levels: UF/RO versus advanced tertiary wastewater treatment with UV disinfection, and UF/RO versus the conventional seawater desalination. Wastewater treatment has reduced consumption of scares brackish water abstraction by 71.3%, a credible improvement towards reconciling the water cycle, that could be achieved by 40% of the current environmental burden and cost using tertiary treatment. If the UF/RO was legalized to be utilized for amenities use to substitute for desalinated water beside aggregation, only then the environmental and economic marginal increase could be justified.

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Fig. 1

source: UN WATER (Mateo-Sagasta et al. 2016)

Fig. 2

adapted from Sachs et al. (2021)

Fig. 3
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Data availability statement

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Abbreviations

CE:

Circular economy

CH:

Climate change

FAO:

Food and agriculture organization

FD:

Fossil fuel depletion

FU:

Function unit

GCC:

Gulf corporation council

HT:

Human toxicity

IR:

Ionizing radiation

KEPA:

Kuwait environmental public authority

KSA:

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

LCA:

Life cycle assessment

LCIA:

Life cycle impact assessment

MD:

Metal depletion

ME:

Marine ecotoxicity

MED:

Multi-effect distillation

MEW:

Ministry of electricity and water

MPW:

Ministry of public works

MSF:

Multistage flash distillation

NG:

Natural gas

OD:

Ozone depletion

PM:

Particulate matter formation

PO:

Photochemical oxidation

RO:

Reverse osmosis

ROP:

Reverse osmosis permeate

TA:

Terrestrial acidification

TE:

Terrestrial ecotoxicity

TTE:

Tertiary treated effluent

UAE:

United Arab Emirates

UF:

Ultrafiltration

UV:

Ultraviolet

VLR:

Vertical loop reactor

WRI:

World resource institute

WW:

Wastewater

WWTP:

Wastewater treatment plan

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Acknowledgements

The authors to acknowledge the assistance of Mr. Essa Al Rushidi, Ms. Huda Alanqawi and Mr. Samir Lutfi for their valuable assistance in explaining Kuwait WWTP. The authors acknowledges the support of Kuwait University for providing all necessary LCA software and databases required to complete this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Industrial and Management Systems Engineering Department, Kuwait University, Safat, 13060, Kuwait City, Kuwait

    Esra E. Aleisa

  2. Department of General Services and Training, Ministry of Electricity and Water, Kuwait City, Kuwait

    Asmaa M. Al-Mutairi

  3. Civil Engineering Department, Kuwait University, Safat, 13060, Kuwait City, Kuwait

    Asmaa M. Al-Mutairi & Mohamed F. Hamoda

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  1. Esra E. Aleisa
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Appendices

Appendix 1

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Table 1 Specifications of the effluent described in the reference flows of FU and corresponding end use specifications (MPW 2018)
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1.

Appendix 2

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Table 2 Chemical additives per cubic meter of TTE
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2,

Table 3 TTE LCI of the UV disinfection system (Lee et al. 2012)
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3 and

Table 4 ROP inventories excluding TTE
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4.

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Aleisa, E.E., Al-Mutairi, A.M. & Hamoda, M.F. Reconciling water circularity through reverse osmosis for wastewater treatment for a hyper-arid climate: a life cycle assessment. Sustain. Water Resour. Manag. 8, 83 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40899-022-00671-8

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