Comparative life cycle assessment of remote potable water supply for the Department of Defense.

Autor: Boone C; Department of Systems Engineering and Management, Air Force Institute of Technology, 2950 Hobson Way, Wright-Patterson AFB, 45433, OH, United States of America., Chini CM; Earth Systems Predictability & Resiliency Group, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Batelle Ave, Richland 99352, WA, United States of America. Electronic address: christopher.chini@pnnl.gov.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: The Science of the total environment [Sci Total Environ] 2024 Nov 01; Vol. 949, pp. 174732. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jul 16.
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.174732
Abstrakt: The Department of Defense (DOD) and other agencies, including relief organizations, require potable water for remote missions around the globe. As part of recent initiative by the U.S. Federal government through Executive Order 14057, the DOD has been instructed to investigate the sustainability of operations and practices within the context of climate change. One such practice that needs to be addressed is the procurement of potable water, an essential requirement of any remote mission or location. Currently, there are three primary means of procuring potable water at remote locations: bottled water, on-site purification, or tie-in to existing, local infrastructure. The first two operations are often considered the most secure options, but have sustainability concerns. The purpose of this study is to compare the environmental impacts of bottled water procurement versus on-site treatment via a mobile Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Unit (ROWPU), which uses multiple levels of filtration to make potable water from a local source. A cradle-to-gate assessment was developed for both systems to compare different options for potable water supply. An in person inventory was paired with data taken from the Ecoinvent 3.8 database to directly compare the two systems. The two systems are compared on a 5-year timeline to analyze the environmental impact of repeated bottled water transport versus diesel generator-fueled on-site treatment. Across all impact categories, the results indicate that high energy costs of the reverse osmosis process have significantly less impact on the environment than the repetitive transport and procurement of bottled water. The results of the study have important implications for advancing sustainable operations for remote communities or temporary settlements.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Christopher Chini reports financial support was provided by Air Force Civil Engineer Center. Caleb Boone reports financial support was provided by Air Force Civil Engineer Center. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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