AboutDavid L. Russell, PE Expertise I`m a Chemical,Civil and Environmental Engineer and have a number of projects in all phases of the environment.
I have worked in the chemical industry and am active in professional societies, and am currently on an industrial wastes committee for the Water Environment Federation, and have taught courses in remediation in the US and abroad.
I have written one book on Remediation of petroleum Contaminated Sites, and have a second book on PRACTICAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT to be published by John Wiley in September, 2006. I've also written over 30 articles on various elements of environmental problems and cleanup. Most Recently, I have addressed a NATO Scientific and Techical Conference on Ecoterrorism, and have worked with the same group on remediation of sites contaminated with Chemical Warfare Agent materials and othe materials as well. . I can answer q`s about Chemical and Environmental Engineering, land development, air pollution, water pollution, soil and water cleanup, combustion, international environmental problems, industrial processes chemical processes. Civil and Environmental and Chemical Engineering. Overall, I have over 35 years of experience in this area. Note: I do not answer homework questions
Experience I love work in the third world and developing areas
because it is challenging and one can get a sense of accomplishment.
Question QUESTION: I noted an earlier post that seemed to be about estimating the carbon emissions embedded in polymers used for wastewater solids conditioning. Did you find an answer to this question? Thank you.
ANSWER: I'm the puzzled one. Can you point me to the question so that I can get the context?
There should not be any measurable carbon emissions from the polymers used for wastewater treatment because they are soluble starches used to condition the water and promote settling of the sludges and promote clarification of the water.
The conditioning polymers are generally applied in low doses (LB/ Ton) for sludge conditioning (range is about 1%) and they are expensive, so you might get some additional biodegradation from them because most are modified starches.
In the clarifier and other locations, the rate of application is in terms of parts per million (1 PPM = 8.34 lb/ Million gallons), and that's a number (increase) which is just too small to notice.
If you can point me to my earlier answer, I'll be happy to clarify it.
Dave
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Thanks. That was a quick response. You are right that adding polymers in
wastewater treatment is going to have virtually no impact on greenhouse gas
emissions. However, what I was seeking is "embedded" carbon emissions -
that is, the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions related to the manufacturing
(and transportation, although that would be minor) of polymers. In other
words, how much carbon dioxide equivalent emissions are created by the
manufacture of 1 kg (or other unit) of polymer?
Answer Your question was interesting. I did some further research and I'm working on something for an ISO 14041 presentation on Life Cycle Accounting which is a very interesting and different subject of its own. I did come across the following which is not by any means definitive, but gives a bit of a guide. http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/sustainability.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/gui_EHSGuideline...
it's prepared by the IFC (subset of the World Bank) and it has some data in Table 3 which indicates the energy used per ton of polymer produced.
Based on that alone, and I would double or triple the figure for the totality of the manufacturing process, and picking the highest number, that gives (maximum ranges) about 4000-10,000 KwH per ton of product. Assuming that the numbers are metric tons, that would give you about 4-10 kwh/T. given that 1 Kg of Methane contains about 36 MJ per KG. a little more research indicates that methane has about 20.5 Mj/ kg CO2. So we have about 36/20 = 1.8 kg of CO2 per kg of polymer used. That's a very rough number but it's a start.
