Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Wastewater-Derived Phosphorus Products

Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Wastewater-Derived Phosphorus Products: An Agricultural End-User Perspective

Lam, K.L. (TU Delft Sanitary Engineering; Duke Kunshan University)
Solon, Kimberly (Universiteit Gent)
Jia, Mingsheng (Universiteit Gent)
Volcke, Eveline I. P. (Universiteit Gent)
van der Hoek, J.P. (TU Delft Sanitary Engineering)

2022

Recovering phosphorus from wastewater in more concentrated forms has potential to sustainably recirculate phosphorus from cities to agriculture. The environmental sustainability of wastewater-based phosphorus recovery processes or wastewater-derived phosphorus products can be evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA). Many LCA studies used a process perspective to account for the impacts of integrating phosphorus recovery processes at wastewater treatment plants, while some used a product perspective to assess the impacts of producing wastewater-derived phosphorus products. We demonstrated the application of an end-user perspective by assessing life cycle environmental impacts of substituting half of the conventional phosphorus rock-based fertilizers used in three crop production systems with wastewater-derived phosphorus products from six recovery pathways (RPs). The consequential LCA results show that the substitution reduces global warming potential, eutrophication potential, ecotoxicity potential, and acidification potential of the assessed crop production systems in most RPs and scenarios. The end-user perspective introduced in this study can (i) complement with the process perspective and the product perspective to give a more holistic picture of environmental impacts along the “circular economy value chains” of wastewater-based resource recovery, (ii) enable systemwide assessment of wide uptake of wastewater-derived products, and (iii) draw attention to understanding the long-term environmental impacts of using wastewater-derived products.

life cycle assessment
environmental impacts
phosphorus recovery
wastewater
agricultural land application
end-user perspective
resource recovery

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:f9b30dbb-8953-486a-80fb-56a3c7925079

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c00353

2023-01-07

0013-936X

Environmental Science & Technology (Washington), 56 (14), 10289-10298

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2022 K.L. Lam, Kimberly Solon, Mingsheng Jia, Eveline I. P. Volcke, J.P. van der Hoek