Minimizing grid energy consumption in wastewater treatment plants: Towards green energy solutions, water sustainability, and cleaner environment

Mohammad Alrbai; Sameer Al-Dahidi; Loiy Al-Ghussain; Ali Alahmer; Hassan Hayajneh

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.172139

Minimizing grid energy consumption in wastewater treatment plants: Towards green energy solutions, water sustainability, and cleaner environment

Sci Total Environ. 2024 May 20:926:172139. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.172139. Epub 2024 Apr 1.

Authors

Mohammad Alrbai¹, Sameer Al-Dahidi², Loiy Al-Ghussain³, Ali Alahmer⁴, Hassan Hayajneh⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Jordan, Amman 11942, Jordan. Electronic address: m.alrbai@ju.edu.jo.
² Department of Mechanical and Maintenance Engineering, School of Applied Technical Sciences, German Jordanian University, Amman 11180, Jordan.
³ Energy Systems and Infrastructure Analysis Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL 60439, USA. Electronic address: lalghussain@anl.gov.
⁴ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL 36088, USA; Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tafila Technical University, Tafila 66110, Jordan.
⁵ Department of Engineering Technology, College of Technology, Purdue University Northwest, 2200, USA.

PMID: 38569971
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.172139

Abstract

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) consume significant amount of energy to sustain their operation. From this point, the current study aims to enhance the capacity of these facilities to meet their energy needs by integrating renewable energy sources. The study focused on the investigation of two primary solar energy systems in As Samra WWTP in Jordan. The first system combines parabolic trough collectors (PTCs) with thermal energy storage (TES). This system primarily serves to fulfill the thermal energy demands of the plant by reducing the demands from boiler units, which allows more biogas for electricity generation. The second system is a photovoltaic (PV) system with Lithium-Ion batteries, which directly produces electricity that will be used to cover part of the electrical energy demands of plant. To assess the optimal configuration, two distinct scenarios have been formulated and compared to the current case scenario (SC#1). The first scenario focuses on maximizing the net present value (NPV) and minimizing the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). The second scenario is centred on minimizing the levelized cost of heat (LCOH). The findings indicate that both scenarios succeeded in reducing the reliance on the grid to a value that reach 1 %. Moreover, they both reduced biogas percentage in energy production from 88 % to approximately 65 % through the integration of the PV system. In terms of thermal demand, SC#2 reduced the reliance on biogas boiler units from 100 % to 25 %, while SC#3 achieved an even more impressive reduction to just 8 %. The best LCOE value was attained in SC#2, at 0.0895 USD/kWh, with an NPV of 10.54 million USD. Conversely, SC# 3 yielded an LCOH value of 0.0432 USD/kWh_th compared to 0.0534 USD/kWh_th USD for SC#2. Despite their relatively high capital and operating costs, SC#2 and SC#3 managed to substantially decrease the annual electricity expenditure from approximately 2 million USD to 86,000 USD and 0 USD, respectively.

Keywords: Concentrated solar power; Economic analysis; Photovoltaic; Solar energy; Sustainability; Waste management.