Life cycle assessment of seawater reverse osmosis plant powered by fossil fuels versus renewable energy

Abstract

Coupling seawater reverse osmosis with renewable energy such as PV and wind is an active research area and understanding the environmental impact of these integrations using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool is a major concern for many communities. The aim of this study is to investigate the LCA of several renewable energy alternatives coupled with Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) for a small-medium town in remote areas and quantify the environmental impact reductions that can be achieved when powering this plant with electricity from biogas from Anaerobic Digestion (AD), PV and wind. To do so, a 4500 m3-day SWRO plant based in Lebanon was designed using WAVE software and each of biogas, PV and wind plants were designed using HOMER Pro. The LCA was performed using Simapro PhD version 9 and IMPACT2002+ impact assessment method was used. Results show that the most optimal integration is with wind energy because the highest environmental impact reductions were achieved in most categories. However, both biogas and PV did prove to have significant improvements compared to conventional fossil fuels.