Comparison of life cycle assessment methods,application to a wastewater treatment plant

Fichier: 

086.pdf

Type: 

article

Comparative: 

oui

Année de publication: 

2006

Langue: 

Anglais

Code: 

Water-Saving

The study has shown that the building of a wastewater treatment plant was necessary and that an improvement of the performances of the plant would be done by reducing even more the concentrations in pollutants like heavy metals and eutrophying substances in the effluent of the wastewater treatment plant.
LCA is an essential tool for environmental analysis to avoid displacing pollution. It is well developed for the study of energetic systems, where the list of the emitted substances is usually quite short (CO2, CH4, NOX) and the impacts to consider are well known (global warming, photo-oxydant formation, resources).
But when the inventory becomes more complex (heavy metals, eutrophying substances) the limits of the impact assessment methods appear. A convergence in the models of the different methods for carcinogenic effects,ecotoxicity or eutrophication would be necessary.