Assessing the wastewater reclaim system consisted of wastewater plant - hybrid constructed wetland - ultra filtration and reverse osmosis in a chemical industrial park, a multi-criteria decision-making analysis

Sci Total Environ. 2024 May 20:926:171942. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.171942. Epub 2024 Mar 23.

Abstract

Wastewater reclaim in industrial parks can effectively reduce the dependence on external water resources, few literatures evaluated the reclaim system from perspectives of economy, technology, and environmental impact. It is very popular across China that a constructed wetland is linked with a wastewater plant and then discharged the tailwater into surface waters, based on current situation, pilot experiment, and other available techniques, six scenarios for wastewater reclaim system were designed for Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park. Using life cycle assessment, it was found that in scenario of pilot experiment, most environmental impact was derived from wastewater plant and ultra filtration - reverse osmosis, in which ultra filtration - reverse osmosis accounted >20 % for POCP, AP, and EP, Wastewater plant accounted >86 % for ADP, ODP. It was showed that electricity and sludge were most important parameters affecting LCA, when electricity consumption was reduced by 20 %, total standardized environmental impact would be changed in the range of 1.40 %-1.65 %, the most significant change was HTP (6.12 %-6.32 %) when 20 % up and downward change in sludge amount, followed by MAETP (5.27 %-5.36 %). A multi-criteria decision-making analysis was conducted on all the scenarios based on environmental impact, life cycle cost, technical efficiency, it was showed that the scenario designed for pilot experiment was the best available technique, which was consisted of wastewater plant, hybrid constructed wetland, ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis, and reused as desalted water. A wastewater reclaim plant is suggested from the result of this paper. It was believed that this study could provide references for construction of wastewater reclaim system in industrial parks of the world.

Keywords: Hybrid constructed wetland; Life cycle assessment; Multiple criteria decision analysis; Technical efficiency; Ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis.