Environmental performance of wastewater facilities addressing emerging contaminants

ONTIVEROS G. Y CAMPANELLA E.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; SETAC Latin America 11th Biennial Meeting; 2015

SETAC

One of the greatest concerns in the environmental field is associated risk due to emissions of new pollutants produced by human activities. Early identification and investigation of potential contamination is essential to protect environment and people health. Emerging contaminant has taken relevance in the last years including a specific group of compounds, the Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products (PPCPs). One source of important PPCPs pollution are wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) where they can suffer degradation and sorption processes by the biomass present in biological treatments. However, the difficulty of identifying and quantifying makes the process simulation a relevant tool for the behavior analysis of these compounds. There is also a another problem that arises when two or more alternative treatments are analyzed to determine which one offers the best results not only in performance terms but also environmental. In this way the introduction of an environmental metric is useful to select the best alternative. In the present work were carried out WWTPs simulations with the software GPS-X, including PPCPs and its behavior evaluation. Then, using a life cycle impact analysis through OpenLCA software, each alternative was analyzed to determine the most suitable option.