Page 269 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

250 Life Cycle Assessment of Wastewater Treatment

(Emmerson et al., 1995). In fact, other studies on this theme involving developed
countries have been present in literature since the 1990s, as detailed in Corominas
et al. (2013) and Heimerson et al. (2016).
From 2000 to the present, it was noted that LCA applications to wastewater in
the context of developing countries have attracted an increasing amount of interest
from research groups. Indeed, a growth in the number of publications was recently
observed, mainly after 2010, as presented in Figure 12.1. However, as already men-
tioned, only 39 studies on this topic were recorded. This shows that studies on this
subject are still very scarce; it is an important field to be further explored in future
research.

12.4.4 region of researcH
Concerning regional distribution, as presented in Figures 12.2 and 12.3, most papers
recorded originated from Asian countries, mainly from China, the top-ranked coun-
try in terms of number of publications. To a lower extent, studies were also found from
other Asian countries, such as India (Kalbar et al., 2012, 2013), Singapore (Zhang and
Wilson, 2000), and Thailand (Limphitakphong et al., 2016). America also presented
several publications, principally from Brazil (Gutierrez et al., 2014; Lopes et al., 2014;
Lutterbeck et al., 2017) and Mexico (Garcia et al., 2011; Musharrafie et al., 2011;
Romero-Hernandez, 2005).
Similarly to the observations for Asia, papers were recorded from several other
countries in South America, such as Argentina (Ontiveros and Campanella, 2013),
Bolivia (Cornejo, 2015), Chile (Ledon et al., 2017), and Colombia (Tatiana et al.,
2016). Particularly, Hernandez-Padilla et al. (2017) carried out research involving
developing countries from Latin America.

8
7
7 6

Number of publications 5 4 3 5 4 5 5 3 5

2
1 1 1 2
1
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

FIGURE 12.1 Temporal evolution of publications related to LCA applied to wastewater
management in developing countries.