Energy Productivity Analysis of Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plants: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

Abstract

Currently, the efficiency improvement of industrial wastewater treatment plant (IWWTP) has turned into a noticeable challenge for plants operator. In addition, decreasing in the cost and energy consumption of wastewater treatment plants has attracted great interest by water agencies and IWWTP management. Since IWWTPs are energy-intensive facilities, the need for cost-efficient and reliable treatment processes has significantly increased so as to meet the standards of environmental regulations and national goals. Determination of energy efficiency of IWWTPs is a starting point for any energy-saving initiative. In this paper, a case study was carried out in 79 WWTPs in Iran's industrial zones to identify electrical energy efficiency indices (EEI). In order to achieve a reliable result, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was applied by Lingo11 software. The electrical energy efficiency index was estimated by regression equations for plants with different level of treatment (ready to discharge to the river, irrigation of green spaces, and agriculture) using Minitab17 software. The obtained results showed that only 1% of the treatment plants have high energy efficiency index (0.8<EEI<1), 3% of the treatment plant have high-moderate energy efficiency index (0.6<EEI<0.8), 15% of treatment plants have moderate electrical energy efficiency (0.4<EEI<0.6), 22% of treatment plants have low-moderate electrical energy efficiency (0.2<EEI<0.4), and 59% of treatment plants have low electrical energy efficiency (EEI<0.2). The obtained results enable IWWTP operators to identify the cost items to improve the productivity of plants.

A Novel Proposed Improvement on Performance of a Photovoltaic/Water Pumping System: Energy and Environmental Analysis

“…Extensive researches have been carried out in the field of water and improving the water technologies e.g. atmospheric water generator [13], waste water treatment [14][15][16], water desalination [17][18][19], and optimizing water consumption in agriculture [20]. Some other scholars focused on using different kinds of power plants for desalinating water e.g.…”