Formalization of a technical procedure for process ecodesign dedicated to drinking water treatment plants

Nowadays rigorous methodologies for performing ecodesign of process plants are still missing in current industrial practices and in the literature. The use of a fully integrated Process Modelling and Life Cycle Assessment (PM-LCA) tool combined with appropriate mathematical analysis methods seems to be an audacious approach. nical procedure for process ecodesign is formalized in this paper in order to address this issue. The proposed methodological approach is applied to a drinking water treatment plant. The EVALEAU tool, a PM-LCA integrated simulator based on a computational library of models for water treatment processes, is used including a tool box for sensitivity analysis. st, a ground modelling scenario, representing the regular functioning of the plant is established and validated. An in-depth analysis of this plant model highlights the major environmental issues. Secondly, several technological solutions are tested in alternative modelling scenarios, which are derived from the ground one. Interesting technological solutions are then combined in one optimal scenario, which manages to decrease the environmental impacts (e.g. reduces “Climate Change” by 17.2%). At the same time, operational costs are increased by 10.8% showing opposite behaviour. Compared with field reality, the solutions proposed are realistic and demonstrate that the studied plant functioning is close to the optimum.