title: Development of a protocol to optimize electric power consumption and life cycle environmental impacts for operation of wastewater treatment plant.
abstract: In wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), the portion of operating costs related to electric power consumption is increasing. If the electric power consumption decreased, however, it would be difficult to comply with the effluent water quality requirements. A protocol was proposed to minimize the environmental impacts as well as to optimize the electric power consumption under the conditions needed to meet the effluent water quality standards in this study. This protocol was comprised of six phases of procedure and was tested using operating data from S-WWTP to prove its applicability. The 11 major operating variables were categorized into three groups using principal component analysis and K-mean cluster analysis. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for each group to deduce the optimal operating conditions for each operating state. Then, employing mathematical modeling, six improvement plans to reduce electric power consumption were deduced. The electric power consumptions for suggested plans were estimated using an artificial neural network. This was followed by a second round of LCA conducted on the plans. As a result, a set of optimized improvement plans were derived for each group that were able to optimize the electric power consumption and life cycle environmental impact, at the same time. Based on these test results, the WWTP operating management protocol presented in this study is deemed able to suggest optimal operating conditions under which power consumption can be optimized with minimal life cycle environmental impact, while allowing the plant to meet water quality requirements.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Engineering, Pusan National University, Busan, 46241, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Wenhua
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Piao
authors.affiliation: Institute for Environmental Technology and Industry, Pusan National University, Busan, 46241, Republic of Korea.|EnvironSoft Inc., Ltd., Yangsan, 50580, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Changwon
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Pusan National University, Busan, 46241, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Sunja
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.affiliation: EnvironSoft Inc., Ltd., Yangsan, 50580, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Hyosoo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Energy and Environmental System Engineering, University of Seoul, Seoul, 02504, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Minsoo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Engineering, School of Applied Science, Catholic University of Pusan, Busan, 46252, Republic of Korea. yjkim@cup.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Yejin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D003246:Conservation of Energy Resources / Q000379:methods*; D004777:Environment; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D064091:Waste Disposal Facilities; D014865:Waste Disposal, Fluid / Q000379:methods; D062065:Wastewater / Q000737:chemistry*; D060753:Water Quality
chemical_list: D062065:Wastewater
keywords: Electric power consumption; Life cycle assessment; Mathematical modeling; Multivariate statistical analysis; Wastewater treatment plant