Aspen Plus simulation and life cycle assessment of hospital wastewater treatment using membrane bioreactors technique

Abstract

Wastewater treatment is an eco-friendly process that removes contaminants from wastewater before being discharged back into the environment. The treatment of hospital wastewater is essential because this type of water contains cytotoxic and radioactive agents. This study discusses the environmental aspects of using a membrane bioreactor in the treatment technique instead of traditional processes. Hospital wastewater treatment takes place worldwide, however, this is not the case in Lebanon where wastewater, in general, and hospital wastewater, in particular, is hardly treated and is left scattered where people can access contaminated water. That being said, we shed the light on hospital wastewater treatment using the membrane bioreactors technique by modeling this technique, for the first time, in the Lebanese context using Aspen Plus software and assessing its environmental impacts using a full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study. The results obtained on Aspen plus confirmed that a distillation tower of 10 stages is needed to achieve a high-efficiency process while the environmental life cycle analysis validated the fact that electricity is the major contributor to the environment. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis endorsed the fact that the use of renewable energy such as solar panels in a higher percentage than using conventional types of electricity will mitigate the negative impact of electricity.