Assessing the Energetic and Environmental Impacts of the Operation and Maintenance of Spanish Sewer Networks from a Life-Cycle Perspective

Anna Petit-Boix (), David Sanjuan-Delmás, Sergio Chenel, Desirée Marín, Carles Gasol, Ramon Farreny, Gara Villalba, María Suárez-Ojeda, Xavier Gabarrell, Alejandro Josa and Joan Rieradevall

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2015, vol. 29, issue 8, 2597 pages

Abstract: The environmental impacts resulting from sewer networks are best analysed from a life-cycle perspective to integrate the energy requirements into the infrastructure design. The energy requirements for pumping wastewater depend on the configuration of the city (e.g., climate, population, length of the sewer, topography, etc.). This study analyses and models the effect of such site-specific features on energy consumption and related effects in a sample of Spanish cities. The results show that the average annual energy used by sewers (6.4 kWh/capita and 0.014 kWh/m 3 of water flow) must not be underestimated because they may require up to 50 % of the electricity needs of a typical treatment plant in terms of consumption per capita. In terms of Global Warming Potential, pumping results in an average of 2.3 kg CO 2 eq./capita. A significant positive relationship was demonstrated between the kWh consumed and the length of the sewer and between other factors such as the population and wastewater production. In addition, Atlantic cities can consume 5 times as much energy as Mediterranean or Subtropical regions. A similar trend was shown in coastal cities. Finally, a simple predictive model of the electricity consumption was presented that considers the analysed parameters. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Energy; Sewer; LCA; Operation; City (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-015-0958-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:29:y:2015:i:8:p:2581-2597

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-015-0958-2

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().