The Application of Life Cycle Assessment to Water and Wastewater Treatment

Dear Colleagues,

Water and wastewater treatment are essential to human health and well-being. They are also fundamental in protecting environmental health and ecosystem sustainability. To treat water and wastewater properly, treatment facilities consume huge amounts of electricity, use various chemicals, and generate wastes and emissions which cause environmental impacts and concerns. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive analysis to better understand the environmental consequences of existing water and wastewater treatment facilities and new emergent techniques to improve treatment efficiency or promote recycling and reuse of waste streams. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely used tool for environmental impact analysis and can be applied to evaluate various products, processes, and services. More importantly, it covers the entire life cycle of a product or process and provides a quantitative and holistic analysis of resource use and environmental impacts. Therefore, this Special Issue will focus on application of LCA in water and wastewater treatment and aims to collect studies of the following:

1. LCA of water and wastewater treatment processes and facilities
2. LCA of technologies to recycle and reuse wastes, e.g., biosolids, concentrate, and scum, in water and wastewater treatment plants
3. LCA of technologies to recover energy in wastewater, e.g., wastewater-to-biofuel production
4. Application of LCA results to improve treatment efficiency and optimize facility design
5. Environmental policies of water and wastewater treatment

We are looking forward to having your valuable research results and manuscripts related to above topics.

Prof. Dr. Dongyan Mu
Prof. Dr. Min M. Addy
Guest Editors

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• life cycle assessment
• water and wastewater treatment
• recycle and reuse of biosolids, concentrate, and scum
• recover energy in wastewater
• wastes-to-energy
• renewable energy use in water treatment
• Improve energy efficiency
• sustainability in water and wastewater treatment