Wastewater Life Cycle Assessment Education

ONU McIntosh Center; Activities Room

Wastewater treatment plays a critical role in protecting ecosystem, aquatic, and human health. Direct aquatic emissions discharged in effluent pose recognized threats to health and consume significant amounts of energy. Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of wastewater treatment have highlighted the large contribution of energy consumption to total environmental impacts. These studies typically focus on a single wastewater treatment plant and assume energy mix without considering local variation. As infrastructure investment, repair, and upgrades are becoming more prioritized, it is important that a life cycle perspective is taken, and that future engineers are prepared to take this perspective. Currently LCA, and even sustainability education, is not taught in most engineering classrooms. Additionally, traditional teaching methods are typically not sufficient in teaching sustainability education, and other teaching pedagogies have been employed with various degrees of success. To successfully educate engineering students on LCA and sustainability in the wastewater process, we plan on combining LCA, wastewater treatment, and curricular development. The final educational product will be a week-long module and homework that can be easily distributed to other institutions for use in LCA education. The module will be used at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels to determine if the methods used are sufficient in giving a brief education on LCA and sustainability at different education levels.