Greenhouse Gas Emission Analysis From Municipal Sewage Treatment Plants Of China

Worldwide climate change within recent years has leaded to more and more negative influence. Tackling climate change has become one of serious challenges for China as a developing country with large population, low economic development level and relatively weak capacity to respond to climate change. Nowadays only little attention has focused on Greenhouse gas emission from municipal wastewater treatment industry, lack of system analysis and emission reduction proposal. Therefore, it is necessary and significant to calculate the emission amount of greenhouse from municipal wastewater treatment industry, then to evaluate the influence and provide recommendations for emission reduction.The study firstly focused on the domestic and international progresses of greenhouse gas emission accounting, and discussed the greenhouse gas emission from municipal wastewater treatment industry in our country. The determination method of the greenhouse gas emissions from municipal wastewater treatment industry was put forward in this study, which was classified as direct and indirect emissions. The accounting model of greenhouse gas emissions from municipal wastewater treatment industry was built based on related IPCC calculation models and parameters, and the parameters were modified according to the actual situation.Based on macro-quantitative studies on statistics data, the change of greenhouse gas emission was discussed from municipal wastewater treatment industries in different areas, using different processes and having different scales. To achieve minimum of greenhouse gas emissions, the conclusions were: the indirect CO2 emissions amount, namely energy consumption, was the main factor to influence total CO2 emissions in municipal wastewater treatment plant; the indirect emissions and energy consumption were not completely determined by geographic location and economic development; the A/O method was not recommended due to the high cost of greenhouse gases treatment, and AB, artificial wetland or A2/O method could be prioritized for process design; The common emission reduction of pollutants and greenhouse gas could be achieved by developing medium-sized sewage treatment plant; sewage treatment plant level and greenhouse gas emissions had the typical incremental effect; it would has certain economic benefits if the sludge treatment was be enhanced and meanwhile greenhouse gas emissions was reduced by choosing suitable processing technology, such as sludge anaerobic digestion.Finally, the study put forward the coordination effect between the energy conservation and emission reduction and the greenhouse gas emission, and provided some feasible strategies on greenhouse gas emission reduction from municipal wastewater treatment industry.