Characterizing the fossil fuel impacts in water desalination plants in Kuwait: A Life Cycle Assessment approach

Khawla Al-Shayji and Esra Aleisa

Energy, 2018, vol. 158, issue C, 681-692

Abstract: This study provides a detailed quantified baseline for the environmental effects of desalination in Kuwait. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to model the environmental impacts of all nine desalination plant in the country both using Multistage Flash Desalination (MSF) and Reverse osmosis technologies at two scales: per one ton and on annual production. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is used to investigate which fossil fuel types is significantly contributing to increased environmental burden of desalination. The results indicate that although 12.2% of Kuwait's electrical energy is generated using crude oil, crude oil alone contributes 63% to the global warming. The results also show that desalination in Kuwait contributes 7.89E+08 kg Sb eq. to abiotic depletion, 1.15E+08 kg SO2 eq. to acidification, 1.91E+07 kg PO4 eq. to eutrophication, 2.71E+10 kg CO2 eq. to global warming, 2.47E+04 kg CFC-11 eq. to ozone layer depletion, 6.45E+09 kg 1,4-DB eq. to human toxicity, 6.03E+12 kg 1,4-DB eq. to marine aquatic ecotoxicity, and 7.53E+06 kg C2H4 eq. to photochemical oxidation. ANOVA reveals that natural gas has the lowest environmental impact, except on abiotic depletion; and that crude oil contributes almost four times more to global warming than other fuels used.

Keywords: Desalination; Life Cycle Assessment; Statistical analysis; ANOVA; Energy; Fossil fuel (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544218311423
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:energy:v:158:y:2018:i:c:p:681-692

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2018.06.077

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().