Assessment and modeling of effluent quality, economic benefits, and greenhouse gas reduction for receiving brewery wastewater on A2O by GPS-X

Shengjie He; Jianfeng Zhou; Li Zhou; Nan Yang; Jingsi Gao; Jia Zhu; Jiawei Chen; Junjie Chen

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163671

Assessment and modeling of effluent quality, economic benefits, and greenhouse gas reduction for receiving brewery wastewater on A²O by GPS-X

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Jul 20:883:163671. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163671. Epub 2023 Apr 25.

Authors

Shengjie He¹, Jianfeng Zhou², Li Zhou³, Nan Yang⁴, Jingsi Gao⁵, Jia Zhu⁶, Jiawei Chen⁶, Junjie Chen⁷

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials & Environmental Engineering, Shenzhen Polytechnic, Shenzhen 518000, China; Beijing Enterprises Water Group Limited (BEWG), Beijing 100000, China; School of Environmental and Municipal Engineering, Qingdao University of Technology, Qingdao 266011, China.
² Georgia Tech Shenzhen Institute, Tianjin University (GTSI), Shenzhen 518000, China.
³ School of Environmental and Municipal Engineering, Qingdao University of Technology, Qingdao 266011, China.
⁴ College of Chemical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
⁵ School of Materials & Environmental Engineering, Shenzhen Polytechnic, Shenzhen 518000, China. Electronic address: gaojingsi@szpt.edu.cn.
⁶ School of Materials & Environmental Engineering, Shenzhen Polytechnic, Shenzhen 518000, China.
⁷ School of Municipal and Environmental Engineering, Jilin Jianzhu University, Changchun 130118, China.

PMID: 37100123
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163671

Abstract

Recently, breweries have been allowed to discharge brewery wastewater (BWW) to the sewage pipe network to alleviate the shortage of carbon sources of municipal wastewater treatment plants (MWTPs) under the premise of signing a contract with MWTPs in some countries. This study aims to provide a model-based method for MWTPs to evaluate the threshold, the effluent risk, the economic benefits, and the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction of receiving BWW. In this research, a simulation model of an anaerobic-anoxic-oxic process (A²O) receiving BWW was established based on the data of a real MWTP and brewery using GPS-X. The sensitivity factors of 189 parameters were analyzed, and several sensitive parameters were calibrated stably and dynamically. By analyzing the errors and standardized residuals, the calibrated model was proved to be high-quality and reliable. In the next phase, the impact of receiving BWW on the A²O was evaluated in terms of effluent quality, economic benefits, and GHG emissions reduction. The results showed that receiving a certain amount of BWW can effectively reduce the carbon source cost and GHG emissions for the MWTP compared with adding methanol. Though the chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand in five days (BOD₅), and total nitrogen (TN) in the effluent increased in various degrees, the effluent quality still met the discharge standard implemented by the MWTP. The study can also facilitate the modeling work for many researchers and promote more kinds of food production wastewater to be treated equally.

Keywords: Brewery wastewater; GPS-X; Greenhouse gas emission; Model calibration; Sensitivity analysis; Standardized residual analysis.