1 research outputs found
The Economics of Wastewater Treatment Decentralization: A Techno-economic Evaluation
The
existing wastewater treatment infrastructure has not adequately
established an efficient and sustainable use of energy, water, and
nutrients. A proposed scheme based on source separation and water-efficient
use is compared to the current wastewater management paradigm (one
largely based on activated sludge) using techno-economic terms. This
paper explores the economic viability of adopting more sustainable
management alternatives and expands the understanding of the economics
of decentralization and source-separation. The feasibility of three
different potential types of source-separation (with different levels
of decentralization) are compared to the conventional centralized
activated sludge process by using recognized economic assessment methodologies
together with widely accepted modeling tools. The alternatives were
evaluated for two common scenarios: new developments and retrofit
due to the aging of existing infrastructures. The results prove that
source-separated alternatives can be competitive options despite existing
drawbacks (only when countable incomes are included), while the hybrid
approach resulted in the least cost-effective solution. A detailed
techno-economic evaluation of the costs of decentralization provides
insight into the current constraints concerning the paradigm shift
and the cost of existing technologic inertia