What you need to know about water treatment systems
Water treatment systems provide an efficient and cost-effective method of reducing the amount of CO2 that is produced during the process of water treatment, according to a new report.
The study, titled Water Treatment Systems: Lessons from a Changing Environment, was released on Tuesday by the University of Michigan’s Center for Environmental Science.
The authors of the report, researchers from the U-M Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainable Resource Management, concluded that while water treatment is an effective method for reducing the production of COII, the cost to implement is substantial and is likely to be significantly higher in the future.
The costs associated with water treatment are estimated to be $40 per tonne of CO 2 and $400 per ton of CO, according the report.
For instance, a 10-tonne tonne water treatment system would produce a total of 10,000 tons of CO-2 and costs would be $300 per ton.
“These costs have to be considered in the context of the global energy and water resource challenges that we face, and the current global climate impacts,” lead author Andrew Matson, a doctoral candidate in U-Mi’s Department of Environmental Engineering and the Center for Climate Change and Resource Management (CEERM), said in a statement.
“For instance, CO2 emissions from power generation and storage in developing countries have doubled since the 1990s and are projected to rise by another 6 percent by 2050.
Meanwhile, in developed countries, CO-3 emissions have fallen by more than half and are expected to remain stable for the foreseeable future.”
In the United States, the amount produced in a water treatment plant can be estimated to cost $50 per ton for a 10 tonne plant, the report said.
However, in countries like China, India and Brazil, water treatment plants are often considered to be expensive because they use much less water than a typical treatment plant, with a price tag of about $25 per ton to $60 per ton in the United Kingdom.
“The most common water treatment processes for large scale and localized systems use far less water, are less costly, and require relatively few chemicals and equipment, compared to the largest water treatment projects,” the authors wrote.
“However, this means that costs associated in the long term with large scale water treatment programs can be significant and will likely increase over time as the technologies that are used change.”
The report noted that water treatment methods are not the only option for reducing CO2 levels.
Another option for water treatment has been the use of steam to generate steam to remove CO2 from the air.
“A recent study by the Water Technology Institute at the University in Australia, which included work by U-Mo researchers, has shown that using steam to capture CO2 at a large scale to produce steam can produce significant CO2 reductions for large-scale water treatment.
The researchers demonstrated that steam-driven CO2 capture at an air-conditioned power plant can achieve a similar level of CO02 removal to the current generation of steam-powered water treatment technologies, and that this method can be used to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere,” the report read.
In the end, the authors said, “The cost of water and CO2 treatment is not an obstacle to a water- and CO 2-efficient, cost-competitive water-management system, but it may increase over the coming years.”
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