News

Modeling of greenhouse gas emissions

Next to the calculation of energy consumption and methane production (both part of the standard WEST® library), WEST® now offers a model for the calculation of N2O emissions.

Global warming has triggered both regulators and industries to reduce energy consumption and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, currently being quantified using carbon footprint.

The IPCC protocol uses a methane emission factor based on incoming biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and flow rate.
The IPCC approach may be satisfactory for conducting national inventories, but it cannot be used by the wastewater treatment industry to accurately determine greenhouse gas emissions nor for the development of strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The model was implemented at modelEAU (Canada) by Lluis Corominas, Laura Snip and Peter Vanrolleghem; it contains processes for a 2-step nitrification and a 4-step denitrification and is based on the work of Hiatt and Grady (Water Environ. Res. 80(11): 2145-2156; 2008).

The model is available to all WEST® users, from their User Area.