Treatment of micropollutants in wastewater: balancing effectiveness, costs and implications

In this contribution, we analyse scenarios of advanced wastewater treatment for the removal of micropollutants. We refer to current mainstream, broad spectrum processes including ozonation and sorption onto activated carbon. We argue that advanced treatment requires properly implemented tertiary (nutrient removal) treatment in order to be effective. We review the critical aspects of the main advanced treatment options, their advantages and disadvantages. We propose a quantification of the costs of implementing advanced treatment, as well as upgrading plants from secondary to tertiary treatment when needed, and we illustrate what drives the costs of advanced treatment for a set of standard configurations. We propose a cost function to represent the total costs (investment, operation and maintenance) of advanced treatment. We quantify the implications of advanced treatment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Based on the indicators of total toxic discharge, toxicity at the discharge points and toxicity across the stream network discussed in Pistocchi et al., 2022, we compare costs and effectiveness of different scenarios of advanced treatment. ... read more in the manuscript

PISTOCCHI Alberto;  ANDERSEN H.;  BERTANZA Giorgio;  BRANDER Aline;  CHOUBERT Jean Marc;  CIMBRITZ Michael;  DREWES Joerg;  KOEHLER Christian;  KRAMPE Joerg;  LAUNAY Marie;  NIELSEN P.H.;  OBERMAIER Nathan;  STANEV Stanislav;  THORNBERG Dines; 

2022-11-14

ELSEVIER

JRC128612

0048-9697 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722046915,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC128612,   

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157593 (online),