Abstract:

Wastewater treatment plants are one of the most important environmentally processes due to the intensive use of dyes and chemicals in the textile industry. As a result, although wastewater treatment plants have become an important part of the facilities in order to reduce environmental pollution, they produce sludge and various emissions, which have a negative impact on the environment while consuming energy and chemicals. One of the processes with enormous chemical consumption is the Neutralization process, which aims to adjust the pH. In this case, the neutralization system needs to be analyzed in order to determine its overall environmental impacts and then identify the most environmentally appropriate options. The aim of this study is to compare the environmental impacts of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid as two alternative chemicals used in the neutralization process in the wastewater treatment plant of a textile factory with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. The environmental effects resulting from the use of these two chemicals proposed according to the BREF report were revealed by the CML-IA method and the gate-to-gate method. According to the results, by using Carbon Dioxide instead of sulfuric acid, the best improvement is in the Abiotic Depletion category with 93%, while the least improvement is in the Examination of the Ozone Layer with 44%. Using Carbon Dioxide in the Neutralization process, no improvement was observed in the Global warming potential and human toxicity categories.

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