Greenhouse gas emission reduction and carbon credit revenue in a waste leachate treatment plant

As the largest emitter, China faces great challenges of controlling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including those from wastewater treatment plant. In recent years, however, emission trading is becoming an attractive approach to help the plant owners implement cleaner treatment technologies to reduce their GHG emissions. Among these, the advanced anaerobic process such as up-flow anaerobic sludge semi-fixed filter (UASSF) is competent in high strength wastewater treatment, and renders much more carbon credits than other conventional anaerobic systems. This paper presents a study on emission reduction based on the UASSF system in a waste leachate treatment plant (WLTP). The calculation results show that the total GHG emission reductions can achieve 16217.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (tCO(2)e) per year. Owing to the emission trading and energy recovery, the running cost of the project is reduced from 4.12 to 1.69 (sic) per ton leachate. Also, the good social and ecological benefits can be achieved due to the significant reductions of anthropogenic emission.