The Impact of Photovoltaic Power System on Carbon Footprint in the Wastewater Treatment Plant

This paper presents a comparison of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for a wastewater treatment plant before and after the installation of a photovoltaic power system (PV). In this context, three PVs were simulated, obtaining a decrease in energy consumption in the station by up to 40%. Carbon footprint was estimated based on GHG generated by biological wastewater treatment, nitrous oxide emissions from wastewater, GHG emissions associated with methane and GHG emissions from electricity consumption. Following the calculation, it was determined that the corresponding GHG electricity consumption represents up to 28.89% of total emissions. Using a PV this percent decreases to 19.60% and the total GHG decrease by 12%. For this research was considered daily data over a period of 5 years.