Outline

Life Cycle Assessment of Seawater Desalinisation in Western Australia

Dr Wahidul K. Biswas Senior Lecturer Centre of Excellence in Cleaner Production School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering Curtin University of Technology Australia Email: w.biswas@curtin.edu.au

Why the LCA of seawater desalinisation is important? Life cycle assessment methodology Limitations of the study Results and discussions
Identification of hot spots Conventional and renewable energy mix

Conclusions

Background
Drought has reduced the average inflow into Perths dams from 340 GL in 1975 to less than 90 GL currently. The Water Corporation commissioned the Seawater Desalination Plant Perth Seawater Desalinisation Plant (commissioned in 2006) Southern Seawater Desalinisation Plant (to be commissioned) The overwhelming majority of the energy currently used for desalination is obtained from fossil fuels. In addition to electricity generation, GHGs are also emitted from chemicals and membranes production This paper determines the life cycle of greenhouse gas emissions due to the production of desalinated water

BACKGROUND
Drought has reduced the average inflow into Perths dams from 340 GL in 1975 to less than 90 GL currently. The Water Corporation commissioned the Seawater Desalination Plant Perth Seawater Desalinisation Plant (commissioned in 2006) Southern Seawater Desalinisation Plant (to be commissioned) The overwhelming majority of the energy currently used for desalination is obtained from fossil fuels. In addition to electricity generation, GHGs are also emitted from chemicals and membranes production This paper determines the life cycle of greenhouse gas emissions due to the production of desalinated water

METHODOLOGY
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT (LCA)
Technique for assessing the environmental performance of a product, process or activity from cradle-tograve Compiles and evaluates inputs (e.g., chemicals, electricity) and outputs (e.g., CO2, CH4and N2O)

METHODOLOGY
The LCA follows the ISO14040-43 guidelines (ISO 1997), and is divided into four steps: 1) goal and scope definition; 2) inventory analysis; 3) impact assessment; and 4) interpretation (as presented in the Results section of this paper).
Goal and scope definition

Inventory analysis

Interpretation

Impact Assessment

METHODOLOGY
1. Goal and scope definition
The goal is to assess the life cycle GHG emissions of seawater desalination cradle to gate approach, the functional unit is the GHG emissions of 1 GL of desalinated water production. The system boundary of LCA mainly consists of three stages: seawater extraction, treatment and post-treatment.

METHODOLOGY
2. Inventory analysis
A life cycle inventory considers the amount of each input and output for processes which occur during the life cycle of a product. Undertaking a life cycle inventory is a necessary initial step in carrying out an LCA analysis. The inputs for five stages of the life cycle of 1 m3 of water production were used to calculate the inputs for 1 GL of water for GHG emission calculations.

METHODOLOGY
3. Impact assessment
The GHG emissions assessment of producing 1 GL of desalinated water includes two steps. The first calculates the total gases produced in each process,
The input and output data in the LCI were put into the Simapro 7 software and were linked to relevant libraries in the software The LCA Library is a database, which consists of emission values of one unit of a product.

LIMITATIONS
Cartridges, which are an input for the filtration process, had to be excluded due to the absence of information Emission factors for sodium hypochlorite, carbon dioxide liquid and fluorosilicic acid were obtained from the Eco-invent database New library for sodium metabisulphite was developed

The second converts these gases emissions to CO2-e.

The Australian Greenhouse Gas method was used

RESULTS
3500 3000 2893.5

RESULTS
Transport 0.4% Membrane production 0.4% Landfill sludge 0.1%

GHG emissions (tonne CO2-e)

2500

3,890 tonne CO2 -e/GL

2000 1500

1000 604.0 500 248.9 7.4 0 1.1 48.2 0.2 0.2 21.5 5.9 55.6 0.8 0.1 1.7 0.5

Desal - SSWA - delivery and waste treatment Carbon dioxide Methane Nitrous oxide 603.99 7.44 1.11

Desal - SSWA - Post-treatment 48.18 0.20 0.19

Desal - SSWA RO 2893.51 21.50 5.91

Desal SSWA - Pre-treatment 55.61 0.77 0.11

Desal SSWA - Extraction 248.93 1.67 0.47

GHG emissions from the extraction, pre-treatment, reverse osmosis, post-treatment, and water delivery and waste treatment stages accounted for 6.2%, 1.5% , 75.1%, 1.2% and 16% of 1 GL of water production, respectively.

The emissions from the generation of electricity for pumping, membrane operation and water delivery account for a large proportion (92.1%) of the GHG emissions

Chemicals production 7.0%

Electricity generation 92.1%

RESULTS
3500
2921

CONCLUSIONS
The equivalent of 3,890 tonnes of CO2 would be emitted from the production of 1 GL of desalinated water from the SSDP. Reverse osmosis contributes significantly higher GHG emissions than other stages during the life cycle of desalinated water production. The greenhouse gas emissions from the generation of electricity from fossil fuels for pumping, membrane operation and water delivery account for a large proportion (92%) of GHG emissions during the life cycle of 1 GL of water production. About 91% of the total GHG emissions from the national grid-powered desalination plant can be avoided by switching to wind energy.

GHG emissions (tonne CO2 -e)

3000

2500

2261

2000
1602

1500
943 613

1000
470 327 185 42 29 34 39 44 49 Des al - SSWA - Posttreatment 29 34 39 44 49 283

500

7 Desal - SSWA RO 283 943 1602 2261 2921

19 32 44 56

67 128

190 251

Desal - SSWA - delivery and waste treatment 42 185 327 470 613

Des al SSWA - Pretreatment 7 19 32 44 56

Desal SSWA - Extraction 5 67 128 190 251

Wind 100% National Grid 0% Wind 75% National Grid 25% Wind 50% National Grid 50% Wind 25% National Grid 75% Wind 0% National Grid 100%

Life cycle GHG emissions can be reduced from 3,890 tonnes CO2-e to 367 tonnes CO2-e if 100% of the total electricity comes from wind turbines.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This project is carried out under the auspice and with the financial support of the Southern Seawater Alliance, East Perth Western Australia.

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