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Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Wastewater-Derived Phosphorus Products: An Agricultural End-User Perspective.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Lam, KL; Solon, K; Jia, M; Volcke, EIP; van der Hoek, JP
Published in: Environmental science & technology
July 2022

Recovering phosphorus from wastewater in more concentrated forms has potential to sustainably recirculate phosphorus from cities to agriculture. The environmental sustainability of wastewater-based phosphorus recovery processes or wastewater-derived phosphorus products can be evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA). Many LCA studies used a process perspective to account for the impacts of integrating phosphorus recovery processes at wastewater treatment plants, while some used a product perspective to assess the impacts of producing wastewater-derived phosphorus products. We demonstrated the application of an end-user perspective by assessing life cycle environmental impacts of substituting half of the conventional phosphorus rock-based fertilizers used in three crop production systems with wastewater-derived phosphorus products from six recovery pathways (RPs). The consequential LCA results show that the substitution reduces global warming potential, eutrophication potential, ecotoxicity potential, and acidification potential of the assessed crop production systems in most RPs and scenarios. The end-user perspective introduced in this study can (i) complement with the process perspective and the product perspective to give a more holistic picture of environmental impacts along the "circular economy value chains" of wastewater-based resource recovery, (ii) enable systemwide assessment of wide uptake of wastewater-derived products, and (iii) draw attention to understanding the long-term environmental impacts of using wastewater-derived products.

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Published In

Environmental science & technology

DOI

EISSN

1520-5851

ISSN

0013-936X

Publication Date

July 2022

Volume

56

Issue

14

Start / End Page

10289 / 10298

Related Subject Headings

  • Wastewater
  • Phosphorus
  • Life Cycle Stages
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Environment
  • Animals
  • Agriculture
 

Citation

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Lam, K. L., Solon, K., Jia, M., Volcke, E. I. P., & van der Hoek, J. P. (2022). Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Wastewater-Derived Phosphorus Products: An Agricultural End-User Perspective. Environmental Science & Technology, 56(14), 10289–10298. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c00353
Lam, Ka Leung, Kimberly Solon, Mingsheng Jia, Eveline I. P. Volcke, and Jan Peter van der Hoek. “Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Wastewater-Derived Phosphorus Products: An Agricultural End-User Perspective.Environmental Science & Technology 56, no. 14 (July 2022): 10289–98. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c00353.
Lam KL, Solon K, Jia M, Volcke EIP, van der Hoek JP. Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Wastewater-Derived Phosphorus Products: An Agricultural End-User Perspective. Environmental science & technology. 2022 Jul;56(14):10289–98.
Lam, Ka Leung, et al. “Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Wastewater-Derived Phosphorus Products: An Agricultural End-User Perspective.Environmental Science & Technology, vol. 56, no. 14, July 2022, pp. 10289–98. Epmc, doi:10.1021/acs.est.2c00353.
Lam KL, Solon K, Jia M, Volcke EIP, van der Hoek JP. Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Wastewater-Derived Phosphorus Products: An Agricultural End-User Perspective. Environmental science & technology. 2022 Jul;56(14):10289–10298.
Journal cover image

Published In

Environmental science & technology

DOI

EISSN

1520-5851

ISSN

0013-936X

Publication Date

July 2022

Volume

56

Issue

14

Start / End Page

10289 / 10298

Related Subject Headings

  • Wastewater
  • Phosphorus
  • Life Cycle Stages
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Environment
  • Animals
  • Agriculture