RT Journal Article
T1 How decentralized treatment can contribute to the symbiosis between environmental protection and resource recovery
A1 Estévez Rivadulla, Sofía
A1 González García, Sara
A1 Feijoo Costa, Gumersindo
A1 Moreira Vilar, María Teresa
K1 Decentralized wastewater treatment systems
K1 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
K1 Environmental Life Cycle Costing (ELCC)
K1 Mineral fertilizers
K1 Biofertilizers
K1 Urban farming
AB Challenges associated with the sustainability of the water cycle pose new opportunities for resource recovery and greater environmental protection. While centralized wastewater treatment plants must evolve in their design and operation to adapt to a scenario of increasing demand for water, resources and energy, the decentralized approach emerges as an option to be considered in small communities or developing residential areas where bioenergy production can be improved through the recovery of organic matter in segregated streams or where the investment in the sewer network for connection to a centralized facility may be technologically or economically unfeasible. The main objective of this work is to evaluate the environmental and economic profile of a hybrid-decentralized configuration for the purpose of efficient wastewater management and resource recovery and its comparative evaluation with the centralized treatment scenario. Beyond water reclamation, decentralized treatment offers the possibility of valorization of digestate streams as nutrient sources for horticultural or ornamental crops in the vicinity of the plant. Based on the results of the environmental profile, this manuscript shows that the decentralized treatment approach is in line with the philosophy and guidelines of the circular economy, as it allows the use of reclaimed water and biofertilizers under safe and environmental-friendly conditions
PB Elsevier
YR 2022
FD 2022
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/27669
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/27669
LA eng
NO Science of The Total Environment 812 (2022) 151485. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.151485
NO This research was supported by the Run4Life project, which receives funding from the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (GA no 730285-1). All of them belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group (GRC ED431C 2017/29), to CRETUS (Interdisciplinary Center for Research in Environmental Technologies) and to the department of chemical engineering of the University of Santiago de Compostela. Dr. S. González-Garcia would also like to express her gratitude to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for financial support (Grant reference RYC-2014-14984). All these programs are co-funded by FEDER (EU). S. Estévez also thanks to the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities for financial support (Grant reference PRE2020-092074)
DS Minerva
RD 28 abr 2026