Muñoz Ivan, Fernández-Alba Amadeo Rodríguez
Departamento de Hidrogeología y Química Analítica, Universidad de Almería, ctra. de Sacramento s/n, La Cañada de San Urbano, 04120 Almería, Spain.
Water Res. 2008 Feb;42(3):801-11. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2007.08.021. Epub 2007 Aug 25.
The aim of the present work is to find out whether or not, and to what extent, the environmental impacts of reverse osmosis desalination are reduced when brackish groundwater is used instead of sea water. In order to answer this question, the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is used, and two water production plants are compared. The brackish groundwater scenario is based on a plant located in Almería (southern Spain), while the sea water scenario is based on literature data. Four impact categories and two environmental indicators, one of them related to brine discharge, are included. The results show that the key life-cycle issue of brackish groundwater desalination is electricity consumption, and since this is substantially reduced with regard to using sea water, the life-cycle impacts are found to be almost 50% lower. An uncertainty analysis based on Monte-Carlo simulation shows that these environmental savings are significant for all impact categories. Potential local impacts provoked by brine discharge are also found to be lower, due to a reduced content of salts. It is concluded that, when and wherever possible, exploitation of brackish groundwater resources should be assigned priority to sea water resources as an input for reverse osmosis desalination, although it must be taken into account that groundwater, as opposed to sea water, is a limited resource.
本研究的目的是查明在使用微咸地下水而非海水进行反渗透海水淡化时，其对环境的影响是否以及在何种程度上会降低。为了回答这个问题，采用了生命周期评估（LCA）方法，并对两座水厂进行了比较。微咸地下水方案基于位于西班牙南部阿尔梅里亚的一座水厂，而海水方案则基于文献数据。研究涵盖了四个影响类别和两个环境指标，其中一个指标与盐水排放有关。结果表明，微咸地下水淡化的关键生命周期问题是电力消耗，并且由于与使用海水相比电力消耗大幅降低，发现其生命周期影响降低了近50%。基于蒙特卡洛模拟的不确定性分析表明，这些环境效益在所有影响类别中都很显著。由于盐分含量降低，盐水排放引发的潜在局部影响也较低。得出的结论是，只要有可能，在反渗透海水淡化的水源选择上，应优先开采微咸地下水资源而非海水资源，不过必须考虑到，与海水不同，地下水是一种有限资源。
