A New Quantitative Overall Environmental Performance Indicator For A Wastewater Treatment Plant PDF
A New Quantitative Overall Environmental Performance Indicator For A Wastewater Treatment Plant PDF
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: A Wastewater Treatment Plant consists of multiple equipment and processes to treat wastewater. The
Received 14 February 2017 wastewater treatment process consumes resources and releases emissions that could potentially harm
Received in revised form the environment. Due to the growing concern on the environmental impact of Wastewater Treatment
10 August 2017
Plants, much research has been done to assess its performance and optimize its processes towards
Accepted 19 August 2017
cleaner productions. Yet to date, the study on quantifying the overall environmental performance of a
Available online 20 August 2017
Wastewater Treatment Plant has not been done. The objective of this paper is to develop a new green
Handling Editor: Yutao Wang index as a unified overall quantitative environmental performance indicator for a Wastewater Treatment
Plant and its associated processes. The developed green index is applied as an indicator to represent the
Keywords: multiple green elements of the treatment processes, and to benchmark the performance of the Waste-
Sustainability water Treatment Plant under study. The Green Index enables a facility manager to efficiently monitor,
Green index analyse and improve the performance of a Wastewater Treatment Plant in a cleaner production program.
Green indicator © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Wastewater Treatment Plant
Environmental performance
Wastewater Treatment Plant (WTP) is a set of equipment that 1. Primary Treatment: A mechanical treatment used to remove
executes multiple processes to treat wastewater and produce gross, suspended and floating solids. The suspended solids are
environmentally safe, treated water. Malaysia, like most countries, removed by screening to trap solid objects, and by
have made it mandatory to have wastewater treatment plants for sedimentation.
the municipal and industrial areas, and has established regulations 2. Secondary Treatment: The dissolved organic substances from
to ensure that water produced from WTP is environmentally safe. primary treatments are decomposed by biological activity under
For example, the Environmental Quality (Industrial Effluent) Reg- aerobic conditions.
ulations 2009 was gazetted to guide the management of the in- 3. Tertiary Treatment: An additional treatment to improve the
dustrial wastewater process, while the Environmental Quality effluent quality before being discharged to the environment
(Sewage) Regulations 2009 and Environment Quality Act 1974 were (river, lake, sea, ground, etc.)
established to guide the management of the municipal wastewater
treatment process (Farid et al., 2016). The WTP process has been well-established for its important
The typical process involved in most WTP as mentioned by role in reducing the environmental impact of wastewater. However,
the processes involved in wastewater treatment consume resources
and release emissions that could potentially harm the environ-
ment. According to Meneses et al. (2015), WTP contributes to global
* Corresponding author. Process Systems Engineering Centre (PROSPECT), warming from various sources of emissions and need a control
Research Institute of Sustainable Environment (RISE), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia,
81310 UTM, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia.
strategy to reduce its impact on the environment. Schaubroeck
E-mail address: [email protected] (Z.A. Manan). et al. (2015) stated that, presently, there is no evidence that the
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.08.169
0959-6526/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
816 M.A. Mustapha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 167 (2017) 815e823
usage of WTP decreases environmental degradation. Therefore, this without chemical phosphorus removal. Although many studies
problem needs detailed investigations in order to assess the actual have used the aforementioned performance assessment, Teodosiu
impact of WTP to the environment. Bateganya et al. (2015) also et al. (2016) mentioned that each methodology has its advantages
mentioned that without any monitoring or assessment, the WTP and limitation. From their comparison, they concluded that LCA
discharge could be beyond permissible limits, and might in fact, be needs to emphasize more on water impact and both EIQ and WF
the cause of water pollution. should have a standardized assessment as in LCA.
With growing concern from researchers and practitioners to- The aforementioned review shows that researchers have
wards the environmental impact of WTP, much research has been acknowledged the potential environmental impact from WTP
done to assess the performance of WTP for optimizing its processes processes. Thus, many studies have been done to manage and
towards cleaner production. A performance assessment of the reduce environmental impacts either in WTP design process or
process is vital to acknowledge the baseline performance, and the WTP operations. Although studies regarding WTP performance
opportunity for process improvement towards a cleaner produc- assessment have contributed in reducing the environmental
tion. Many performance assessment tools for WTP have been degradation, yet to date, the study on quantifying the WTP overall
developed in recent years. Nowadays, the broadly used perfor- environmental performance has not been done. Thus, the objective
mance assessment tools to assess WTP are the Life Cycle Cost of this paper is to develop a new Green Index (GI) as an overall
Analysis (LCCA), Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), Environmental Impact quantitative environmental performance indicator of a WTP pro-
Quantification (EIQ) and Water Footprint (WF) (Teodosiu et al., cess for sustainability using the Green Index (GI) tool by Mustapha
2016). Even though there are differences between the perfor- et al. (2016) on facility operations and extending it to WTP pro-
mance assessment tools in terms of methodology and criteria, most cesses for environmental performance assessments. GI is a sys-
research used aforementioned performance assessments to tematic, efficient and integrated approach to collect, monitor and
compare and select the best WTP design to give awareness on how analyse information, data and resources which lead to the sus-
WTP give impact to the environment and a guide for optimizing tainability of a process and promote cleaner production. Moreover,
WTP operations. For example, Piao et al. (2016) conducted perfor- GI would function as a quantitative green indicator that is able to
mance assessment of WTP with the integrated sludge management measure the environmental performance of a process, and at the
system using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and found that the waste- same time as a tool for organization to choose a process that has
water treatment process that is equipped with the most advanced less impact towards the environment. This paper is organised as
equipment has the lowest global warming and eutrophication po- follows: The proposed environmental performance assessment of
tentials. In addition, Rawal and Duggal (2016) conducted the per- WTP is described in Section 2. The application of the proposed GI
formance assessment of WTP using Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) formulation on WTP case study (Base case process, Ludzack-
as the basis for choosing which technology has the best perfor- Ettinger process and Bardenpho process) is presented in Section
mance. Eventually, they found out that the waste stabilization pond 3. The findings and conclusion of the study are presented in Section
technology is better than the trickling filter system and that the 4 and 5.
activated sludge process has the lowest lifetime cost. Apart from
that, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has widely been
used to assess WTP performance. For example, Baresel et al. (2015) 2. Development of the environmental performance
reported that the size of wastewater reclamation facilities for WTP assessment framework
plays a significant role in lowering the Environmental Impact and
suggested that using a larger WTP can lower the environmental Two steps are involved in the development of WTP environ-
impact by using a simpler process for treatment. Another different mental performance assessment methodology. First, data of green
method used by researchers to assess the WTP performance is the elements are analysed using the factor analysis methods for the
water footprint. The water footprint method used in the study by purpose of generating the weighting scheme for the green ele-
Morera et al. (2016) aims to evaluate the water-related impact to- ments. Secondly, the GI is developed using the weighting scheme
wards the environment. This study emphasizes on how water and a stock market composite index formulation. Fig. 1 shows the
footprint would optimize the water usage in WTP. The study shows overall framework of environmental performance assessment in
that when WTP used secondary treatment, the water footprint this study. The GI calculations using this method will be explained
reduced to 72.4% with chemical phosphorus removal and 51.5% in detail in the next section.
M.A. Mustapha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 167 (2017) 815e823 817
Factor
Habidin et al. (2015) used factor analysis to identify the factors that
analysis have an impact in manufacturing practice for process improve-
Quantitative green
ments. Meanwhile, Alias et al. (2015) used factor analysis to
Green element performance
indicator determine the criteria required in leadership for leadership model
data collection
(Green Index) development.
Composite
In this study, the factor analysis is used to generate factor
index
loading from the green elements data. Factor loading is a set of
number assigned to each green element that signifies the correla-
Fig. 1. Overall environmental performance assessment framework. tion strength between the unobserved variables and green ele-
ments. The factor loading assigned to each green element would
2.1. Weighting scheme development later be used as the weighting scheme for GI formulation. The
weighting scheme is considered a practical and standardized
The weighting scheme is a number given to each green element assessment protocol because it depends on actual operation data
that depends on their importance in environmental performance. and not the assumptions. The overall concept of factor analysis
Green elements or also known as the observed variables in this model to identify the factor loading is shown in Fig. 2. The factor
study are Carbon Dioxide emission (CD), Electricity consumption analysis model mentioned by Hardle and Hlavka (2015) is as
(EC), Nitrogen emission (N), Biochemical Oxygen Demand con- follows:
centration (BOD), Air consumption (AC), Nitrate concentration (NT),
Chemical Oxygen Demand concentration (COD) and Water con- V ¼ CF þ U (1)
sumption (WC). The WTP operation data were generated using the
SuperPro Designer software (SuperPro Designer, 2016) for the where,
duration of a year. Although the green elements data were taken
from the SuperPro Designer software, in industrial practice, the V ¼ matrix of correlation coefficient value of observed variables
green elements data from WWTP can be collected by following C ¼ matrix value of common factor
available established guidelines such as the United States Envi- F ¼ matrix of correlation among common factor
ronmental Agency (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2010). U ¼ unique variance
The guideline is for wastewater treatment plant data monitoring,
collecting and reporting to improve the data quality and accuracy in This equation model describes the underlying relationship be-
industry practice. Furthermore, there are studies done to improve tween the observed and unobserved variables. The observed vari-
the methodology of green elements data collection such as done by ables are variables that can be directly measured. For example, in
Marques et al. (2016). The green elements and unobserved com- this study, the green elements data is the observed variables, while
mon factor data were then analysed to investigate the relationship the unobserved variables are the variables that are indirectly
by using factor analysis. The unobserved variables are the common measured but have a common relationship with all of the observed
factor that has relation to all green elements but are indirectly variables. Bjorck (2015) mentioned that, in order to determine the
measured. Factor analysis (FA) is useful for analysing the strength of factor loading from this equation model, the eigenvalues and ei-
the relationship between multiple variables. This method has been genvectors of matrix F is computed using the following equation:
broadly used in research to investigate the correlation between
multiple variables in numerous areas of study. For example, Ce ¼ le (2)
Step 2: Identifying
the factor loading
Factor Factor Factor
using Eq.(2)
Factor
loading loading loading loading
Factor Factor Factor Factor
loading loading loading loading
where, P
It wo
Green Index ¼ P (4)
e ¼ eigenvector of matrix C Io wo
l ¼ eigenvalue
where,
The procedures involved in determining the unobserved vari-
ables and factor loading using equations (1) and (2) can be obtained Io ¼ green elements baseline data
from the procedure proposed by Mak and Nebebe (2016) with the wo ¼ green element weighting scheme
help of Microsoft Office Excel with XLSTAT software. It ¼ green elements of given process data
emission (CD), Electricity consumption (EC), Nitrogen emission (N), 4. Results and discussion
Biochemical Oxygen Demand concentration (BOD), Air consump-
tion (AC), Nitrate concentration (NT), Chemical Oxygen Demand 4.1. Determination of weighting scheme for process activities
concentration (COD) and Water consumption (WC). Note that the
selected green elements may vary depending on the activities The green elements data was generated from simulations using
within a process because the simulation results are only applicable the SuperPro Designer software as shown in Table 1. The selected
to the performance assessment of the selected WTP under study. green elements that affect the environmental performance of WTP
Table 1
Green element data.
WC (kg/h) EC (kWh/h) CO2 (kg/h) AC (kg/h) N2 (kg/h) NO3 (mg/l) BOD5 (mg/l) COD (mg/l)
Table 2 done by Mak and Nebebe (2016) with the help of Microsoft Office
Green performance affecting factors for WTP process. Excel with XLSTAT software.
Variables Detailed description The results in Table 3 show that there are two unobserved
Independent variable Water consumption kg/h
variables which are F1 and F2. The minimum eigenvalue ratio is
Electricity consumption kWh/h assumed as 2. Note that, the unobserved variables can be more than
Carbon Dioxide emission kg/h two by lowering the minimum eigenvalue ratio. However, in this
Air consumption kg/h study only one factor with the highest overall correlation among
Nitrogen emission kg/h
the green elements were chosen. Thus, the minimum eigenvalue
Nitrate concentration mg/l
Biochemical Oxygen mg/l ratio of 2 is sufficient to ensure the effectiveness of the selected
Demand concentration factor as the weighting scheme. These unobserved variables are the
Chemical Oxygen mg/l common factors that have an influence on the process activities.
Demand concentration
The strength relation between the unobserved variables and the
green elements was represented in terms of percentages of
Dependent variable Green Index e
F1 ¼ 59.97% and F2 ¼ 30.40%. The eigenvalue (Table 4) was divided
by the number of independent variables in Table 2 to obtain the
percentage of the relationship strength. Fig. 6 shows the output
Table 3
Factor loading.
model of factor analysis for this case study following the concept
shown in Fig. 2. However, only one set of unobserved variables can
Variables F1 (59.97%) F2 (30.40%)
be chosen as the weighting scheme. For this case study, F1 (59.97%)
Water consumption 0.1653 0.4635 was chosen due to a higher relationship strength compared to F2
Electricity consumption 0.9277 0.3753 (30.40%). The number allocated to each respective independent
Carbon Dioxide emission 0.9255 0.3798
variable in Table 3 is the factor loading. The factor loading value will
Air consumption 0.9211 0.3875
Nitrogen emission 0.9210 0.3876 be used as the weighting scheme for this case study. Note that,
Nitrate concentration 0.6856 0.7240 some of the factor loadings are either positive values, which in-
Biochemical Oxygen Demand concentration 0.6667 0.7421 dicates that the independent variables are proportional, or negative
Chemical Oxygen Demand concentration 0.6668 0.7420
values that indicates whether it is inversely proportional with the
unobserved variables. Furthermore, a factor loading that is close
to 1 or 1 is a sign of strong effect towards the unobserved vari-
Table 4 ables. The results in Table 3 show that in the set of unobserved
Eigenvalues.
variables F1, the highest factor loading value is the electrical con-
F1 F2 sumption, followed by CO2 emissions and air consumption. The
Eigenvalue 4.798 2.432 causes of highest factor loading for electricity consumption can be
explained by investigating the activities of the process. From
observation, most of the processes involve treating the sewage
are shown in Table 2. Table 2 shows that the green elements are the waste that require electricity for operation. For example, at the
independent variables. Therefore, any change in the value of the primary stage, the Anoxic Reactor needs a lot of energy to remove
green elements data would also change the value of the green index nitrogen from the wastewater. This was in agreement with
(dependent variables). Tables 3 and 4 are the output results of Panepinto et al. (2016) where WTP consumed a lot of energy to
factor analysis using the green elements data in Table 1. The pro- treat wastewater. By using the factor analysis methodology, it will
cedure involves applying Eq. (1) and Eq. (2) following the steps not only distribute the weighting scheme fairly but also guide on
F1 = F2 =
59.97% 30.40%
WC EC CD AC N NT BOD COD
0:165 WCt þ 0:928 ECt þ 0:925 CDt þ 0:921 ACt þ 0:921 Nt þ 0:686 NTt þ 0:667 BODt þ 0:667 CODt
Green Index ¼ (5)
0:165 WCo þ 0:928 ECo þ 0:925 CDo þ 0:921 ACo þ 0:921 No þ 0:686 NTo þ 0:667 BODo þ 0:667 CODo
Hence,
Green
ð00:165Þþð29:360:928Þþð242:620:925Þþð4;5100:921Þþð3;465:190:921Þþð00:686Þþð00:667Þþð00:667Þ
Index¼
ð00:165Þþð8:110:928Þþð227:850:925Þþð6;0140:921Þþð4;6140:921Þþð00:686Þþð00:667Þþð00:667Þ
Table 5
Green index and green elements.
Weighting Scheme 0.165 0.928 0.925 0.921 0.921 0.686 0.667 0.667
LUDZACK-ETTINGER PROCESS
BARDENPHO PROCESS
1.1000
0.8000 0.7592
0.7000
0.6000
0.5764
0.5000
Primary Treatment Liquid Effluent Secondary Final Treatment Sludge Effluent
Treatment
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