ICRA, Catalan Institute for Water Research, Scientific and Technological Park of the University of Girona, Emili Grahit 101, E-17003 Girona, Catalonia, Spain.
Water Res. 2013 Oct 1;47(15):5480-92. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2013.06.049. Epub 2013 Jul 5.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique to quantify the impacts associated with a product, service or process from cradle-to-grave perspective. Within the field of wastewater treatment (WWT) LCA was first applied in the 1990s. In the pursuit of more environmentally sustainable WWT, it is clear that LCA is a valuable tool to elucidate the broader environmental impacts of design and operation decisions. With growing interest from utilities, practitioners, and researchers in the use of LCA in WWT systems, it is important to make a review of what has been achieved and describe the challenges for the forthcoming years. This work presents a comprehensive review of 45 papers dealing with WWT and LCA. The analysis of the papers showed that within the constraints of the ISO standards, there is variability in the definition of the functional unit and the system boundaries, the selection of the impact assessment methodology and the procedure followed for interpreting the results. The need for stricter adherence to ISO methodological standards to ensure quality and transparency is made clear and emerging challenges for LCA applications in WWT are discussed, including: a paradigm shift from pollutant removal to resource recovery, the adaptation of LCA methodologies to new target compounds, the development of regional factors, the improvement of the data quality and the reduction of uncertainty. Finally, the need for better integration and communication with decision-makers is highlighted.
生命周期评估（LCA）是一种技术，可从摇篮到坟墓的角度量化与产品、服务或过程相关的影响。在废水处理（WWT）领域，LCA 最早于 20 世纪 90 年代应用。为了追求更环保的 WWT，显然 LCA 是阐明设计和运营决策更广泛环境影响的有价值工具。随着公用事业公司、从业者和研究人员对在 WWT 系统中使用 LCA 的兴趣日益浓厚，对已经取得的成果进行回顾并描述未来几年的挑战非常重要。这项工作对涉及 WWT 和 LCA 的 45 篇论文进行了全面回顾。对这些论文的分析表明，在 ISO 标准的限制内，功能单元和系统边界的定义、影响评估方法的选择以及对结果的解释程序存在可变性。需要更严格地遵守 ISO 方法标准，以确保质量和透明度，并讨论了 LCA 在 WWT 中的应用面临的新挑战，包括：从污染物去除到资源回收的范式转变、适应新目标化合物的 LCA 方法、开发区域因素、提高数据质量和降低不确定性。最后，强调了与决策者更好地整合和沟通的必要性。
