Cost and Energy Incentives for Decentralized Treatment - Reclamation and Footprint

Highly populated cities are expanding geographically to form satellite cities remote from the central urban area. This poses new sanitation problems, such as supplying recycled water, expansion of sewers and central wastewater treatment facilities. Decentralized wastewater treatment systems are being proposed as a solution to this scenario (Massoud et al., 2009). In this study, we utilize a hypothetical but realistic example of Hollywood to analyze the practicability of developing a decentralized system, as an alternative to using centralized facilities. We compared these two alternatives based on numerical analyses of pump-back power consumption for recycled water, sewer expansion cost and the construction cost for expansion of central treatment plant facilities. Pump-back power consumption for this case can amount to approximately 80% of the wastewater treatment power consumption. In this case study, installing decentralized treatment systems proved to be far more economical than relying on central treatment facilities.