Page 280 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Support Sustainable Wastewater Treatment in Developing Countries 261

72% 28% 23% 5%

FIGURE 12.7 Number of studies involving LCA applied to wastewater management in
developing countries that adopts sensitivity analysis and type of sensitivity assessed.

majority of the existing studies have completely neglected this analysis. This low
frequency of sensitivity is probably related to the fact that it greatly increases the
time and work involved in the study, as it normally involves several scenarios and
changes in input data or model premises. Indeed, for Yoshida et al. (2013), the analy-
sis of uncertainty involved in a LCA study is an important step to provide integrity
and robustness to the evaluation.
Therefore, as sensitivity analysis is a crucial step to confirm the robustness of
results (Qureshi et al., 1999; Syamsuddin, 2013), to guarantee the consistency of
future studies, this step must be considered an essential procedure.
Concerning the studies that performed a sensitivity analysis, from Figure 12.7,
it is noted that eight of them evaluated the effect of criteria by changing input data
such as energy mix and operational conditions of the wastewater system. In addi-
tion, only two studies (Barjoveanu et al., 2014; Teodosiu et al., 2016) examined the
sensitivity related to the use of different LCA models (CML, ReCiPe, EcoIndicator).
Hernandez-Padilla et al. (2017) performed a sensitivity analysis for both input data
and LCA methodology. However, the sensitivity of the LCA results is not only related
to these two aspects. Actually, subjective steps such as definition of boundary con-
ditions and normalization process can be as impacting as, or even more impacting
than, input data and the LCA model. So, to really assess the sensitivity of a model
and to guarantee its robustness, it is suggested to carry out such analysis for future
works considering the aforementioned aspects.

12.5 RECOMMENDATIONS AND PERSPECTIVES

12.5.1 consiDeraTion of aDapTeD TreaTMenT TecHnologies
With a focus on supporting sustainable wastewater management systems, an impor-
tant recommendation for future studies is to consider technologies adapted to the
local conditions in terms of environmental, economic, and social aspects. Most stud-
ies reported in the review take into account traditional wastewater methods, which
are not necessarily the best alternatives in the context of developing countries. LCA
investigations dedicated to treatment methods that require low investment and pres-
ent simplified operation and maintenance procedures could be useful to identify