| 1. |
- de Morais Lima, Priscila
(författare)
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Cost analysis of the strategic planning of the integrated urban solid waste system in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul
- 2022
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Ingår i: Engenharia sanitária e ambiental. - 1413-4152 .- 1809-4457. ; 27, s. 749-759
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The worldwide trend of population growth and municipal solid waste generation suggests the application of tools to assess the sustainability of management systems, aiming at more conscious decision-making. The arrival of the circular economy concept and the Brazilian National Solid Waste Policy aroused discussions and greater concern with the products' life cycle and waste reduction. Thus, the present study aimed to economically evaluate the strategic planning of the urban solid waste management system in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, complementing the analysis of environmental impacts previously carried out, aiming to support sustainable decision making. Results showed that the landfill with energy recovery, despite being environmentally favorable, is not economically viable for the local reality. Investments in improving the efficiency of selective collection and sorting of recyclables, as well as a composting unit, are environmentally beneficial and profitable, despite the significant costs involved. It was concluded, then, that the Campo Grande Selective Collection Plan has realistic and environmentally and economically feasible goals that must be implemented urgently in order to improve the quality of life of the population and reduce environmental impacts, both locally and globally.
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| 2. |
- de Morais Lima, Priscila
(författare)
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Environmental assessment of on-site source-separated wastewater treatment and reuse systems for resource recovery in a sustainable sanitation view
- 2023
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 895
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sustainable sanitation solutions are necessary for promoting public health and environmental security. In this study, on-site domestic wastewater treatment (WWT) systems used for households in rural and peri-urban areas of Brazil were compared in different scenarios from a life cycle assessment (LCA) perspective. The evaluated scenarios repre-sented different practices in wastewater management, such as direct discharge into the soil, rudimentary treatment, septic tank, public sewerage system, and source separation of wastewater streams for water, nutrient, and organic mat-ter recovery. The WWT technologies considered in the proposed scenarios of source-separated wastewater streams were as follows: an evapotranspiration tank (TEvap) and composting toilet for blackwater, a modified constructed wetland (EvaTAC) for greywater, and a storage tank for urine. LCA was performed in this study according to the ISO standards to assess the environmental impacts at both midpoint and endpoint levels. The results show that on - site source-separated wastewater treatment systems with resource recovery result in significant reductions in environ-mental impacts compared to scenarios with precarious conditions or 'end-of-pipe' solutions. For example, regarding the human health damage category, the scenarios involving resource recovery, including systems such as EvaTAC, TEvap, composting toilet, and urine storage tank, demonstrate significantly lower values (-0.0117 to -0.0115 DALY) compared to scenarios with rudimentary cesspits and septic tanks (0.0003 to 0.001 DALY). We conclude that the focus should be beyond mere pollution aspects and instead concentrate on the benefits of the co-products, which are: avoiding the extraction and consumption of valuable and increasingly scarce raw materials, such as potable water, and production of synthetic fertilizer. Furthermore, it is highly recommended that an LCA of sanitation systems synergistically integrates the WWT process, the constructive aspects, and the resource recovery potential.
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| 3. |
- de Morais Lima, Priscila
(författare)
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Environmental assessment of waste handling in rural Brazil: Improvements towards circular economy
- 2021
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Ingår i: Cleaner Environmental Systems. - : Elsevier BV. - 2666-7894. ; 2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Rural areas are often neglected with respect to solid waste management, and if some kind of management is in place it is often inadequate, causing harm to the rural population and environment, especially when open burning and dumping are practiced. These practices are performed in rural areas/isolated communities worldwide. In today's scenario, any actions taken by cities generally do not focus on implementing a circular economy, that is, closing the loops and resource recovery, which are important to increase the quality of life of rural populations. In this sense, this study aimed to assess the environmental impacts of the current waste handling scenario of Quilombola communities located in the rural areas of west-central Brazil to shed light on this issue and provide means to decision-makers to act appropriately. Life cycle assessment was employed for a “current” (combination of waste burning and landfilling) and a “proposed” (source separation and home composting) scenario with 1 ton of municipal solid waste as the functional unit and the ILCD recommended method for impact assessment. The results showed that the current scenario registered environmental burdens for all impact categories assessed, such as 415 kg CO2 eq. for climate change and 37,174 CTUe for freshwater eutrophication, while in the proposed scenario, the impacts were reduced in all categories. Based on these results, we concluded that the studied population was exposed to several different impacts, especially due to waste burning, which represented 98.8% of emissions to climate change, and that the proposed scenario poses an alternative conducive to a shift towards circular economy and sustainable development concepts. Our study provides important data regarding necessary improvements to current waste handling practices to reduce environmental impacts and enhance the quality of life of the rural population, which will help decision-makers take appropriate actions.
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| 4. |
- de Morais Lima, Priscila, et al.
(författare)
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Evaluating source separation wastewater systems using traditional life cycle assessment and the planetary boundaries approach
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - 0959-6526 .- 1879-1786. ; 422
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a commonly used method for assessing environmental impacts of systems, but cannot produce absolute values, i.e. a comparison with existing calculated values, which represents limits of what can be emitted into the environment. Therefore, absolute environmental sustainability assessments have been developed to assess impacts against the planetary boundaries (PBs) of the safe operating space for humanity. Since PB-LCAs are novel, it is useful to analyze both results from this method and conventional LCAs, something which has not been done before. This study applied both methods to two full-scale sanitation systems in the city of Helsingborg, Sweden. The current conventional system for handling wastewater with active sludge and food waste to biogas production was compared with the novel project H+ source separation system with three pipes (food waste, grey and black water) with increased resource recovery through anaerobic digestion, ammonia stripping, struvite precipitation and pelletization. The Planetary Boundaries LCA (PB-LCA) results showed that both systems exceeded eight of the assigned shares of PBs, including climate change and biogeochemical flows of nutrients. Traditional LCA (ReCiPe impact assessment) showed net savings for the H+ system in a few categories and considerable reductions in several impacts, e.g., global warming potential (GWP), stratospheric ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, and water consumption. In PB-LCA the H+ system gave additional impacts in both assessments for a few categories, mostly due to high consumption of chemicals in the ammonium stripping process used for nutrient recovery. In conclusion, the combined assessments highlight hotspots for process optimization in the H+ system. From a methodological standpoint, PB-LCA still needs improvements to better reflect avoided burdens and results from traditional LCA should be fully transparent and analyzed carefully. The assessment methods complement each other and can be combined to better represent environmental performances of systems.
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| 5. |
- de Morais Lima, Priscila
(författare)
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Evidences on the application of biosolids and the effects on chemical characteristics in infertile tropical sandy soils
- 2021
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Ingår i: Cleaner Engineering and Technology. - : Elsevier BV. - 2666-7908. ; 4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Biosolids are generated at Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) and they enable closing the loop of valuable resources that are beneficial to the soil-plant system, however, the legal aspects of viability and the principles of the circular economy must be considered. Studies that evaluate the chemical properties of tropical soils subjected to long-term applications of biosolids are scarce, especially with regards to Emerging Organic Micropollutants (EOPs), which makes the present work original. Thus, the present study aimed to statistically evaluate through the Tukey test and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) six years of biosolids‘ application (2012 to 2018), with different application rates, in five areas of infertile tropical soils. The study also evaluated the Potentially Toxic Elements (PTEs) and EOPs in relation to the legal viability aspects of Brazil and the European Union. The results showed that the biosolids can improve the chemical properties of the soil right after the first annual application, without risk of PTEs accumulation. The EOPs that were analyzed from 2016 to 2018, remained below the detection limits, consequently complying with the legislation. Further, the PCA showed that biosolids can replace the use of commercial fertilizers in tropical soils when applied at agronomic rates to meet plant nutrient re-quirements (mainly N and P), which consequently diverts the biosolids from landfills, and reduces the opera-tional costs of Brazilian WWTPs. In this way, the cleaner production of agricultural systems in tropical soil can promote the circular economy and sustainable development in WWTPs in Brazil and other tropical climate regions.
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| 6. |
- de Morais Lima, Priscila, et al.
(författare)
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Farmers’ perceptions on organic fertilisers towards circularity–a case study in Sweden
- 2024
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Ingår i: Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica - Section B. - : Taylor and Francis Ltd.. - 0906-4710 .- 1651-1913. ; 74:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Adequate treatment of organic manures and digestates from livestock production should reduce environmental impacts and provide well-defined and attractive biofertlisers for a crop production market, which can promote the closure of the nutrient cycle in agriculture. In this sense, a survey was conducted during the autumn of 2021 to investigate Swedish farmers’ perspectives on organic fertilisers use. The survey consisted of an online questionnaire, which was distributed broadly in the social media, homepages, different types of networks and at course events in order to reach all types of farms. There were 22 questions focused on current use, reasons for current use and preferences for future use. The analysis of the 99 fully responded surveys, demonstrated that 43% of the respondents think that they will increase their use of organic fertilisers in the coming 5–10 years and 60% think that they will use manure digestate in different forms (both solid and liquid fractions). Soil improvement was the main reason to use organic fertilisers, but there were also preferences for organic fertilisers with fast release of nutrients. The risk of soil compaction was the main reason not to use organic fertilisers and based on the responses, pellets and granulates seem to be more interesting than liquids and solids in general. Animal manures dominate the current use of organic fertilisers in Sweden however, other types of organic waste such as digestate and digestate derived fertilisers seems appealing to Swedish farmers. In conclusion, from this survey with 62% of the respondees in crop production, we found several indications of that there is a potential for increased use of organic fertilisers in Sweden on farms with limited use today. We found an openness, a broad interest and a demand for different types of products of different forms and origin. Since this demand in the end will almost always depend on the price of products in relation to the price of mineral fertilisers, which are fluctuating, we see the need of policy incentives in order to stimulate initiatives for the development towards increased circularity of nutrients.
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| 7. |
- de Morais Lima, Priscila, et al.
(författare)
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Resource-oriented sanitation: Identifying appropriate technologies and environmental gains by coupling Santiago software and life cycle assessment in a Brazilian case study
- 2022
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 837
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Implementation of resource recovery technologies is becoming increasingly important, as humans are exhausting the world's natural resources. Recovering nutrients and water from wastewater treatment systems will play an important role in changing the current trends towards a circular economy. However, guidance is still needed to determine the most appropriate way to do this. In this study two decision-support tools, sanitation planning software (Santiago) and life cycle assessment (LCA), were applied to identify appropriate technologies and their environmental impacts. As a case study, current and alternative scenarios for a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Campo Grande, west-central Brazil, were used. Among 12 scenarios provided by Santiago for efficient nutrient recovery, eight were selected for further assessment. The current WWTP system (UASB reactors) resulted in the highest negative impacts in two of nine assessment categories (freshwater and marine eutrophication), due to nutrient discharge to water. A source separation scenario with urine stored in a urine bank and co-composting of feces showed best overall performance. Electricity consumption played a crucial role for impacts in several categories, while water consumption was not significantly affected by choice of toilet. One Santiago scenario matched the most appropriate scenario with the best environmental performance, but the other seven scenarios were not as beneficial, indicating a need for some adjustments in the software. These results highlight the importance of performing LCA to compare alternative scenarios, even when using a tool designed to identify locally appropriate technologies. The results also indicate that the current wastewater treatment system has reasonable environmental performance, but could be improved if measures were taken to recover energy and reuse water.
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| 8. |
- de Morais Lima, Priscila
(författare)
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Sanitation and water services: Who is the most efficient provider public or private? Evidences for Brazil
- 2022
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Ingår i: Socio-Economic Planning Sciences. - : Elsevier BV. - 0038-0121. ; 79
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The present study analyzes water supply and sewage services in the 95 largest Brazilian cities, using two techniques for analyzing the efficiency boundaries, DEA and SFA. We estimate the efficiency score between the years 2013-2018. The results show that private providers are more efficient than public providers in the water supply service. For the sewage service, we do not find significant differences between public and private providers. The results demonstrate an increase in the sanitary sewage service scores and some declines throughout the analysis, revealing an attempt to increase efficiency in the sewage sector. In the water supply sector, we do not observe an improvement in efficiency. The study suggests the absence of incentives for higher efficiency, requiring the creation of instruments that promote better performance through these services' regulatory structures.
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