Life Cycle Assesment of Daugavgriva Waste Water Treatment Plant

This paper presents the assessment of the environmental impacts caused by the treatment of Riga's waste water in the Daugavgriva plant with biogas energy cogeneration through the life cycle assessment (LCA).

The LCA seems to be a good tool to assess and evaluate the most serious environmental impacts of a facility

The results showed clearly that the impact category contributing the most to the total impact -eutrophicationcomes from the wastewater treatment stage.

Climate change also seems to be a relevant impact coming from the wastewater treatment stage and the main contributor to the Climate change is N₂O.

The main environmental benefits, in terms of the percentages of the total impact, associated to the use of biogas instead of any other fossil fuel in the cogeneration plant are equal to: 3,11% for abiotic depletation, 1,48% for climate change, 0,51% for acidification and 0,12% for eutrophication.