Economic life cycle assessment of aeration blowers used in waste water treatment systems

Abstract

A substantial amount of energy is needed in water supply and treatment systems to convert the unprocessed water into safe drinking water or to purify wastewater prior to discharge to the environment. There is lot of water and energy lost in the process of collection, discharge and delivery of the treated drinking water as well. Therefore, the energy and water consumption by these systems have an indirect effect on the local municipality in terms of high energy consumption and in permissive waste of water. Thus, an exhaustive research and life cycle analysis must be carried out in each process of water treatment to extenuate energy and water inefficiencies in the system. Thus, new methodologies to improve the efficiency of mundane systems have to be encouraged. This study focuses on economic life cycle analysis on water treatment systems to attain sustainability in the economic pursuit of water treatment bodies in US. Life cycle assessment concentrates on techniques to access environment impacts on system associated with all the stages of a product's life form. Life cycle assessment helps in analyzing and quantifying the flaws and recommending methods to overcome them. Thus, in this study we focus on evaluating the effect on energy consumption, cost etc. for two different (competing) blower technologies used by the August County Service Authority (ACSA), Virginia. The two types of blowers are: 1. Centrifugal blowers - an older, established technology supplied by Hipon ; 2. Turbo blowers - a relatively recent technology (to US) supplied by Neuros