SMART-Plant_IWARR2019_Life Cycle Assessment of an Ion Exchange Technology for Nutrient Removal and Recovery from Municipal Wastewater

Abstract: Recovery of nutrients as well as the requirement to meet low effluent values are recent challenges for municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). Therefore, an ion exchange process (IEX) was developed, which is integrated in the secondary effluent of a WWTP to eliminate and recover ammonium and phosphate. This study compares a simple WWTP without targeted nutrient removal in combination with a downstream IEX and a generic reference WWTP with biological nutrient removal in their environmental impacts, using the Life Cycle Assessment method. Preliminary results suggest that an IEX can be beneficial due to upstream energy savings in the WWTP. The results strongly depend on the technical solution for recovery of the IEX regeneration solution