Assessment of sustainable wastewater treatment networks design applying LCA

In order to reduce the effects of water pollution by anthropogenic causes, it is critical to analyze the implementation of wastewater treatment plants networks (WWTNs) as a decentralized option to remove contaminants, which are harmful to human health and aquatic life. An adequate design of these systems should be based on optimization models covering sustainability aspects. In this work, we propose to address a sustainable WWTNs design problem using a multi-objective optimization approach, including economic and environmental performance criteria through CAPEX/OPEX and life cycle analysis (LCA), respectively. ReCiPe method is used to assess the environmental impact of the network. The proposed methodology was evaluated using a case study for the treatment of municipal wastewater from Mexico City. The results show that there is trade-off between both objective functions with a clear environmental impact threshold, where two types of design configurations are obtained (one or two plants). © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

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