• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.187-194
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• 2011

In compliance with an international law about the ocean dumping of the sludge, the proper sewage treatment process which occurs from the wastewater treatment process has been becoming problem. Generally the sewage and the sludge are controlled from anaerobic condition when the sewage is treated and land filled, where the methane$(CH_{4})$ and the nitrous oxide $(N_{2}O)$ from this process are discharged. Because these gases have been known as one of the responsible gases for global warming, the wastewater treatment process is become known as emission sources of green house gases(GHG). This study is to suggest a new approach of estimate and environmental assessment of greenhouse gas emissions and sludge emissions from wastewater treatment processes. It was carried out by calculating the total amounts of GHG emitted from biological wastewater treatment process and the amount of the sludgegenerated from the processes. Four major biological wastewater treatment processes which are Anaerobic/Anoxic/Oxidation$(A_{2}O)$, Bardenpho, Virginia Initiative Plant(VIP), University of Cape Town(UCT)are used and GPS-X software is used to model four processes. Based on the modeling result of four processes, the amounts of GHG emissions and the sludge produced from each process are calculated by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) 2006 guideline report. GHG emissions for water as well as sludge treatment processes are calculated for environmental assessment has been done on the scenario of various sludge treatments, such as composting, incineration and reclamation and each scenario is compared by using a unified index of the economic and environmental assessment. It was found that Bardenpho process among these processes shows a best process that can emit minimum amount of GHG with lowest impact on environment and composting emits the minimum amount of GHG for sludge treatment.