Water and Energy Consumption in Urban Water Cycles

A special issue of Environments (ISSN 2076-3298).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 November 2020) | Viewed by 10215

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Escola de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta de Prados, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
Interests: wastewater and greywater reuse; rainwater harvesting; low impact development; energy to water nexus; urban drainage systems
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the decades, water resources are being intensively overexplored and polluted. The development and increasing demands of the population have also led to an increase in energy consumption. The consumption of both water and energy are linked, and these are the two key elements in the survival of humanity. Energy use in the water sector is growing, and this fact represents adverse impacts on the environment in terms of resource scarcity and climate change, affecting the sustainable development of modern societies.

Taking into account that energy may be used from the point of water abstraction to the point where water returns to the natural system, a combined approach addressing both energy and water will be crucial for improving the interrelationship between these two resources.

In fact, all urban water systems require energy, and it is very important to understand how these two vital resources are related to each other at each stage of the urban water cycle—abstraction, water treatment, end use, and wastewater treatment—in order to improve the efficiency of use and to help define the best management strategies for this cycle.

We particularly invite contributions concerning various aspects of the energy to water nexus in the urban water cycle, namely, studies of its relations as well as system optimization and best management strategies.

Dr. Cristina Matos
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • energy to water nexus
  • urban water cycle
  • efficient use of water and energy
  • urban system optimization
  • sustainable systems

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 1341 KiB  
Article
Comparative Analysis on Urban Flood Countermeasures Based on Life Cycle Thinking: A Comparison between Enhancing of Drainage Capacity Project and Sponge City
by Xuezhou Fan and Toru Matsumoto
Environments 2020, 7(7), 51; https://doi.org/10.3390/environments7070051 - 7 Jul 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4121
Abstract
The recent increase in rainstorm waterlogging disasters has acutely threatened sustainable urban development in China. Traditional strategy to solve this problem is drainage capacity enhancing projects, which aims at enlarging the discharge of water. Recently, there is a new countermeasure emerged in Chinese [...] Read more.
The recent increase in rainstorm waterlogging disasters has acutely threatened sustainable urban development in China. Traditional strategy to solve this problem is drainage capacity enhancing projects, which aims at enlarging the discharge of water. Recently, there is a new countermeasure emerged in Chinese cities: ‘Sponge City’, which aims at enlarging the absorption of water by increasing the curves of urban land. This article endeavours to make a comparison between these two countermeasures by building a framework to design and analyze the private or social costs of two projects which have the same rainwater control capacity. Finally, we have come to the conclusion that only considering initial cost, Sponge City unit cost is much more than drainage capacity enhancing project unit cost; considering external cost, Sponge City is not only competitive from an economical perspective, from an environmental perspective Sponge City is also competitive. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water and Energy Consumption in Urban Water Cycles)
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15 pages, 2645 KiB  
Article
Life Cycle Assessment of Community-Based Sewer Mining: Integrated Heat Recovery and Fit-For-Purpose Water Reuse
by Ludwig Paul B. Cabling, Yumi Kobayashi, Evan G. R. Davies, Nicholas J. Ashbolt and Yang Liu
Environments 2020, 7(5), 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/environments7050036 - 14 May 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 5391
Abstract
Municipal sewage contains significant embedded resources in the form of chemical and thermal energy. Recent developments in sustainable technology have pushed for the integration of resource recovery from household wastewater to achieve net zero energy consumption and carbon-neutral communities. Sewage heat recovery and [...] Read more.
Municipal sewage contains significant embedded resources in the form of chemical and thermal energy. Recent developments in sustainable technology have pushed for the integration of resource recovery from household wastewater to achieve net zero energy consumption and carbon-neutral communities. Sewage heat recovery and fit-for-purpose water reuse are options to optimize the resource recovery potential of municipal wastewater. This study presents a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) focused on global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication potential (EUP), and human health carcinogenic potential (HHCP) of an integrated sewage heat recovery and water reuse system for a hypothetical community of 30,000 people. Conventional space and water heating components generally demonstrated the highest GWP contribution between the different system components evaluated. Sewage-heat-recovery-based district heating offered better environmental performance overall. Lower impact contributions were demonstrated by scenarios with a membrane bioreactor (MBR) and chlorination prior to water reuse applications compared to scenarios that use more traditional water and wastewater treatment technologies and discharge. The LCA findings show that integrating MBR wastewater treatment and water reuse into a district heating schema could provide additional environmental savings at a community scale. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water and Energy Consumption in Urban Water Cycles)
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