Page 283 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

264 Life Cycle Assessment of Wastewater Treatment

wastewater systems in developing countries is crucial to assess the sustainability of
the alternatives considered. For instance, Limphitakphong et al. (2016), who carried
out an LCA study involving a WWTP in Thailand, considered operational costs in
the investigation performed, acknowledging that life cycle cost assessment can sup-
port decision-makers in investment and policy planning.

12.5.5 general recoMMenDaTions
From the data and discussions presented in this chapter, to support sustainable devel-
opment in developing countries, the following recommendations are provided for
future LCA studies involving wastewater management:

• Perform sensitivity analysis of inputs, LCA methodologies’ premises, nor-
malization, and other sources of uncertainty, which is crucial to the robust-
ness of results.
• Develop regionalized LCI and characterization factors for developing
countries.
• Carry out research focused on local reality in terms of technologies, invest-
ments, and social conditions.
• Investigate treatment alternatives that are low cost, simple to operate, and
designed for rural areas.
• Carefully select the impact categories to be considered to avoid information
losses.
• Incorporate economic and social aspects in the LCA.
• Develop guidelines and standard procedures to assess wastewater manage-
ment by LCA.

12.6 CONCLUSIONS
This chapter presented an overview of the challenges and perspectives of LCA in
terms of its application to sustainable wastewater treatment in developing countries.
A review of the previous works addressing this theme was provided, and discussions
and recommendations for future research were presented.

REFERENCES
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