Environmental and economic assessment of advanced oxidation for the treatment of unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine wastewater from a life cycle perspective

As a high-performance liquid rocket fuel, unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) will produce wastewater during transportation, storage and cleaning containers. The wastewater will have a bad impact on human health and ecolog-ical environment, and it must be properly handled. There are many reports about the technical feasibility of UDMH wastewater treatment. Less attention is paid to analyzing the impact on the environment during the treatment process. This paper quantifies the environmental impacts and economic benefits of four advanced oxidation processes for the treatment of UDMH wastewater based on life cycle assessment and life cycle costing methods. Taking the UDMH wastewater produced by an aerospace group of Tianjin, China as the research object, using Fenton method, UV-Fenton method, electro catalytic oxidation (EC) with ruthenium iridium titanium (Ti/TiO2-RuO2-IrO2) as electrode and electro catalytic oxidation with boron-doped diamond (BDD) as electrode as treatment methods, on the basis of the laboratory test, the industrialized device is adopted. The resource consumption, energy consumption, pollutant dis-charge and cost were compared when the TOC removal rate was the same, and a better method of treating unsymmet-rical dimethyl hydrazine wastewater was discussed.The results show that the impact on most types of environments is as follows: UV-Fenton < Fenton < EC (BDD) < EC (Ti/TiO2-RuO2-IrO2), and the four advanced oxidation methods are all beneficial to reduce eutrophication. The life cycle cost of UV-Fenton is the lowest (US$1.53/m3). Combined with environmental and economic analysis, it can be seen that UV-Fenton is the best choice. Through sensitivity analysis, it can be seen that reducing chemical reagents and electricity consumption, and changing the way of generating electricity to renewable energy can significantly re-duce the environmental and economic impact. The life cycle cost of EC(BDD) as the electrode is the highest (US $26.20/m3), but it can achieve a TOC removal rate of 97.75 %, so it is a better choice when only the removal rate is required regardless of cost.