EXTENDED METHODOLOGY FOR WATER RESOURCES AND WATER-RELATED ENERGY ASSESSMENT ADDRESSING WATER QUALITY

Problémy s vodou, zejména její nedostatek a znečištění, ovlivňují každodenní lidský život a hospodářský vývoj. Globální změny klimatu zvyšují pravděpodobnost a četnost extrémních událostí jako jsou sucho a záplavy. Rostoucí problémy s nepravidelnou dostupností a znečištěním vody vyžadují pokročilejší metodiky hodnocení vodních zdrojů, které povedou k efektivnímu využití a hospodaření s vodou. Tato práce se zabývá rozšířenými metodikami pro hodnocení vody z pohledu její kvality a kvantity a pro hodnocení spotřeby energie a produkce emisí souvisejících s vodou. Tři hlavní metodiky jsou navrženy na základě konceptu vodní stopy (Water Footprint) a pinch analýzy vody (Water Pinch Analysis) pro posouzení kvantitativních a kvalitativních hledisek využití a spotřeby vody. Použití těchto metod je rovněž demonstrováno pomocí numerických a empirických případových studií zaměřených na hodnocení a optimalizaci využití regionálních a průmyslových vodních zdrojůDále jsou diskutovány souvislosti mezi vodou a energií (Water-Energy Nexus) za účelem analýzy problémů týkající se vody z širší perspektivy. Z pohledu vody a vodních zdrojů je provedeno počáteční zhodnocení energetické náročnosti a produkce emisí skleníkových plynů v problematice odsolování mořské vody. Výsledky prezentované v této práci navazují na současné metodiky hodnocení vodních zdrojů. Stopa dostupnosti vody (Water Availability Footprint) byla navržena pro zohlednění dopadu degradace kvality vody ve stávajících postupech pro posuzování nedostatku vody, ve kterých nebyla dříve řešena. Druhým přínosem této práce je návrh konceptu kvantitativní-kvalitativní vodní stopy (Quantitative-Qualitative Water Footprint - QQWFP), ve kterém je definována vodní stopa z pohledu nákladů a následně je stanovena v souvislosti s celkovými náklady na spotřebu vody a odstraňování kontaminantů, které se do vody dostávají v průběhu jejího využití. Vodní stopa založená na nákladech poskytuje výsledky, které jsou intuitivnější jak pro management vodních zdrojů tak i pro veřejnost. Tento přístup umožňuje lépe kontrolovat a řídit průmyslové a regionální využívání a správu vody. Třetím přínosem této práce je rozšíření pinch analýzy nedostatku vody (Water Scarcity Pinch Analysis - WSPA), ve které je aplikována pinch analýzy vody na makroúrovni se zaměřením na regionální hodnocení a optimalizaci zdrojů a využívání vody. Všechny tři navržené metody jsou zaměřeny na stanovení dopadů využití vody z hlediska jejího množství a kvality, analýzy QQWFP a WSPA také pokrývají dopady vícečetných kontaminantů. Kromě hledání řešení se tato práce také pokouší naznačit potenciální směry pro budoucí výzkum v dané oblasti. Mezi významná potenciální témata k diskuzi patří 1) pokročilejší metoda kvantifikace vlivu více kontaminantů a 2) implementace a analýza ekonomické proveditelnosti přístupů WSPA a QQWFP s lokalizovanými daty s cílem nalézt přizpůsobené řešení pro optimální využití regionální a průmyslové vody.Water issues, especially water scarcity and water pollution, have been affecting human lives and economic developments for a long time. Global climate changes exacerbate the probability and frequency of extreme events such as water scarcity and severe floods. The increasing irregular water supply and water pollution issues require more advanced water resources assessment methodologies to guide practical water use and management. This thesis presents the extended methods for water quantity-quality assessment and water-related energy consumption and emissions. Three major methodologies are proposed based on the Water Footprint concept and Water Pinch Analysis frameworks to assess the quantity and quality impact of water use. These methods are also demonstrated with numerical and empirical case studies targeting regional and industrial water resource assessment and optimisation. In addition, the Water-Energy Nexus is discussed to investigate the water issues from a broader perspective. An initial assessment of the water-related energy and GHG emissions of the seawater desalination industries is carried out. The studies in this thesis convey several contributions to the current water resource assessment methodologies. The proposed Water Availability Footprint made an initial effort to cover the water quality degradation impact into the existing water scarcity assessment frameworks, which was not addressed previously. The second contribution of this work is the proposal of the Quantitative-Qualitative Water Footprint (QQWFP), where a cost-based water footprint is defined and determined with the total cost of water consumption and removing contaminants generated during the water use process. The cost-based water footprint provides results which are more intuitive for water managers and the public and can better guide industrial and regional water use and management. The third contribution is the development of the Water Scarcity Pinch Analysis (WSPA), which applied the Water Pinch Analysis at a macro level for regional water use assessment and optimisation. All three proposed methods determine the water use impact in terms of water quantity and quality, and the QQWFP and WSPA also cover the impact of multiple contaminants. In addition to seeking solutions, this thesis also proposes potential directions for future investigations. Significant potential aspects to be further discussed include 1) a more advanced quantification method of the impact of multiple contaminants, and 2) an implementation and economic feasibility analysis of the WSPA and QQWFP with localised data, which seek a customised solution to regional and industrial water use optimisation.

Process assessment, integration and optimisation: The path towards cleaner production

This contribution starts from the broad perspective of the global material cycles, analysing the main resource and pollution issues world-wide from the viewpoint of the disturbances to these cycles caused by human activities. The issues are analysed in the light of the currently developing COVID-19 pandemic with the resulting behavioural and business pattern changes. It has been revealed in the analysis of previous reviews that there is a need for a more comprehensive analysis of the resource and environmental impact contributions by industrial and urban processes, as well as product supply chains. The review discusses the recent key developments in the areas of Process Integration and Optimisation, the assessment and reduction of process environmental impacts, waste management and integration, green technologies. That is accompanied by a review of the papers in the current Virtual Special Issue of the Journal of Cleaner Production which is dedicated to the extended articles developed on the basis of the papers presented at the 22nd Conference on Process Integration for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction. The follow-up analysis reveals significant advances in the efficiency and emission cleaning effects of key processes, as well as water/wastewater management and energy storage. The further analysis of the developments identifies several key areas for further research and development – including increases of the safety and robustness of supply networks for products and services, increase of the resources use efficiency of core production and resource conversion processes, as well as the emphasis on improved product and process design for minimising product wastage

Energy-emission-waste nexus of food deliveries in China

Door - to - door cooked food deliveries are booming in China, so are the food packaging waste and the related environmental issues. This paper aims to overview the waste flows generated from the food delivery processes – including food packaging and delivery, which is followed by an analysis of the energy consumption and emissions of the waste treatment and the delivery. Based on the overview, this paper provides benchmarking of the energy consumption and emissions within the food delivery in China, which can be helpful for further studies regarding the energy minimisation and environmental impact mitigation in the food delivery supply chain. The results showed that in 2016, the waste generation of door - to - door cooked food deliveries in China was 1.68 Mt, including 1.33 Mt plastic waste and 0. 35 Mt of wooden chopsticks, which has not been properly recycled and/or reused. In 2016, the energy consumption for treating the food package waste is 58.89 GWh e , and the electricity needed for charging the electric bikes is 14.93 GWhe . The number of spent batteries from the delivery processes, deposited to waste, was 19,507, including 17,285 lead - acid batteries. The estimated GHG emission of energy consumption is 73.89 Gt CO 2eq . The conclusions are that the amount of waste from food deliveries is remarkable and still increasing. Encouraging the use of biodegradable food packaging can be helpful for reducing energy consumption and emissions of waste treatment. The energy consumption and GHG emissions covering the whole supply chain of food deliveries should be further discussed

Research on Classification Method of Building Function Oriented to Urban Building Stock Management

With the development of human society, the urban population and the urban building stock have been continuously increasing. Environmental issues such as greenhouse gases emissions, air pollution, and construction waste have gradually emerged. Due to the lack of an urban functional area database, it is very time-consuming to manually identify building functional areas. As a result, most of the current research on urban building functions are estimated at a large regional scale or only detailed calculations of individual buildings. The building functions classification method needs to be further improved. Based on the traditional methods, this paper proposes a building function classification method with higher recognition accuracy and is less time-consuming. The method is then applied to a certain area of Chaoyang District, Beijing, for validation and verification. The results show that the urban building function classification method in this paper has a recognition rate of 96.18%, an overall classification accuracy of 94.37%, and a kappa coefficient of 0.9089. The classification results are in good agreement with the virtual interpretation. In addition, automatic classification of building functions is implemented using ArcPy in ArcGIS, which significantly improves the classification efficiency

Regional water resources assessment using water scarcity pinch analysis

Water quality problems contribute significantly to water scarcity. This study aims to redefine water scarcity caused by water quality degradation together with water quantity shortage and propose a Water Scarcity Pinch Analysis (WSPA) to quantify the regional water scarcity. WSPA is proposed based on the well-applied method of Water Pinch Analysis. The quality of water sources and demands is specified by setting water quality categories, based on which the staircase Grand Composite Curve (GCC) is constructed. After applying the water quality cascade, the GCC provides the water quantity-quality target, which is the net deficit volume (m3) of water with certain water quality (categories). The water quantity-quality target is defined as the regional water scarcity. Water quality upgrading is applied to maximise the water use efficiency for different purposes by mixing water sources with different qualities. Three case studies are set to illustrate the implementation of the proposed method and investigate the performance of the proposed WSPA. The results show that WSPA identifies both the water quantity scarcity and scarcity caused by insufficient water quality or the water quality mismatch between the sources and demands. Conclusions and novel contributions are i) WSPA enables accounting for water quality together with quantity in water scarcity assessment and provides both quantity and quality targets for minimising regional water scarcity; ii) Applying the WSPA to a macro level elevates the ratio-based water scarcity assessment from single determination to insight-based assessment that can guide the regional water resource management; iii) water quality cascade and water quality upgrade with water dilution can improve water use efficiency and reduce regional water scarcity

Overview of the methodology developments in water-energy nexus studies

Water and energy are the most critical resources for human society development and are also the essential sources of significant environmental issues when not properly managed or utilised. Systematic analysis of the two elements facilitates the overall optimisation of water and energy utilisation, rather than decreasing one while increasing another. The concept of the water-energy nexus, namely the interlinkages between water and energy, has been well accepted and utilised in water-energy resource assessment. Various studies have been carried out under this topic and trying to interpret the linkages and use this linkage to assess resource utilisation performance. This review aims to provide a clear vision and possible future directions for implementing and improving water-energy nexus research. The water-energy nexus assessment methods reported in the literature include conceptual framework, statistical analysis, indicator-based approach, and mathematical modelling. Key findings of the review include: 1) The need for more awareness and understanding of the nexus and improve the assessment from quantification to a designing tool. 2) Data availability and quality are still a great challenge for current studies, and data validation is missing in many studies. 3) The water-energy nexus assessment covers mainly the quantity of the flow. In contrast, the quality of the flow is mainly neglected, and 4) the functional unit of water-energy should be further investigated and using monetary units can be a feasible solution

Water Availability Footprint Addressing Water Quality

The increasing issue of water quality degradation has affected the availability of water. The consideration of water quality is becoming more important for water minimisation. There is a need to integrate water quality into the current water assessment framework. This study tries to involve the water quality into the widely used water footprint assessment framework in order to quantify the water usability changes during the water use process. Based on water footprint concepts from international standard ISO 14046, water availability is further interpreted to emphasize the impact of water quality on the usability. An effective water availability footprint is defined as the quantitative and qualitative extent of a certain body of water which meets the needs of a certain purpose of water use. A water quality index is proposed to quantify the contribution of water quality on water availability, and two approaches of calculating water quality index are discussed, in order to explore the possibility of involving water quality into the water availability footprint assessment. Based on the definitions and framework, a case study is conducted to illustrate the features of this framework, and 3 outflows with different water quality are set to discuss the impact of different water quality profiles on the calculation of water availability footprint. It shows that water quality profiles can have a remarkable influence on the calculation. For the case with an outflow of F2-1, the water availability footprints with minimum water quality index, average water quality index and the volumetric water footprints as 1,600 m3, 1,277 m3, and 1,000 m3. This indicator can determine the consumptive water use and also quantify the exploitation of water quality. The involvement of water quality regarding multiple contaminants in water footprint assessment should be further investigated in future studies

Total site water main concentration selection: A case study

A water main is an interface between water sources and sinks to reduce the complexity of the Total Site Integration for water reuse. The selection of the contaminant concentration of water main can significantly affect the site freshwater use and wastewater generation. This paper proposes a hierarchical approach to the selection of the inter-plant water main concentration for minimising the water utilities. The algorithm first performs Plant- Level Water Integration, exposing to the site level only the residual water sources and sinks. The case study shows that, for the water main inlet concentration increase from 100 ppm to 800 ppm, the minimum freshwater input increases from 127.5 t/h to 133.3 t/h, and the wastewater generation increases from 132.5 to 138.4 t/h. The trend, in this case, can be explained by the fact that the water sinks require cleaner water than the water main can offer. The conclusion is that the selection of the water main contaminant concentration requires balancing the availability from water sources and the demand by water sinks at the site level

Analyzing the Energy Consumption, GHG Emission, and Cost of Seawater Desalination in China

Seawater desalination is considered a technique with high water supply potential and has become an emerging alternative for freshwater supply in China. The increase of the capacity also increases energy consumption and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, which has not been well investigated in studies. This study has analyzed the current development of seawater desalination in China, including the capacity, distribution, processes, as well as the desalted water use. Energy consumption and GHG emissions of overall desalination in China, as well as for the provinces, are calculated covering the period of 2006⁻2016. The unit product cost of seawater desalination plants specifying processes is also estimated. The results showed that 1) The installed capacity maintained increased from 2006 to 2016, and reverse osmosis is the major process used for seawater desalination in China. 2) The energy consumption increased from 81 MWh/y to 1,561 MWh/y during the 11 years. The overall GHG emission increase from 85 Mt CO2eq/y to 1,628 Mt CO2eq/y. Tianjin had the largest GHG emissions, following are Hebei and Shandong, with emissions of 4.1 Mt CO2eq/y, 2.2 Mt CO2eq/y. and 1.0 Mt CO2eq/y. 3) The unit product cost of seawater desalination is higher than other water supply alternatives, and it differentiates the desalination processes. The average unit product cost of the reverse osmosis process is 0.96 USD and 2.5 USD for the multiple-effect distillation process. The potential for future works should specify different energy forms, e.g. heat and power. Alternatives of process integration should be investigated—e.g. efficiency of using the energy, heat integration, and renewables in water desalination, as well as the utilization of total site heat integration

Data-Driven Recyclability Classification of Plastic Waste

This work aims to propose a general data-driven plastic waste categorisation procedure that defines their recyclability based on classification into material recycling classes. The contamination in plastics, such as metal fillers or additives, is accumulated during the entire Life Cycle, which can be harmful to either mechanical or chemical recycling. The plastic polymers can also degrade during recycling due to weakened chemical bonds in the polymers. The diversity of plastic material types and products makes it necessary to use a data-driven quality-based definition of plastic waste properties to facilitate proper waste recycling and mitigation. This study demonstrates the use of Machine Learning tools that enable automated classification to analyse the plastic waste data and derive the indicators for plastic waste recyclability. Tree-based models such as the Decision Tree Model and Random Forest Algorithm are used as they produce interpretable if-then rules for plastic waste categorisation. The proposed method allows an analysis of the metal contamination and degradation data in a collection of plastic material samples or batches to derive a general categorisation rule for a polymer type – PE. The data-driven plastic categorisation could help in understanding the current waste practices and determining a proper recycling plan for local or even global plastic waste