Technical–Economic Feasibility of a New Method of Adsorbent Materials and Advanced Oxidation Techniques to Remove Emerging Pollutants in Treated Wastewater

Abstract

The focus on emerging contaminants (ECs) in wastewater has intensified due to the considerable risks they present to human health and wildlife. This paper presents the results of the technical–economic assessment of the Clean Up solution, carried out in the framework of the project entitled “Validation of Adsorbent Materials and Advanced Oxidation Techniques to Remove Emerging Pollutants in Treated Wastewater”. The viability of the Clean Up system is evaluated by being applied as an advanced treatment system for treated urban wastewater, that is, for the elimination of pathogens and emerging pollutants (EPs), while considering the established quality criteria by current regulations. In this sense, it is a technology that has been successfully validated at an experimental level, and that offers similar removal performance compared to that of the most efficient alternatives available on the market. The technical–economic assessment has been conducted through a systematic process. Initially, the estimation involved the calculation of treatment costs for the Clean Up system when applied at an industrial scale. Subsequently, the treatment costs were estimated for the most favorable technological alternative to the Clean Up system from a technical–economic standpoint, also applied at an industrial scale, within identical scenarios and conditions as those assumed for the Clean Up system. The final step involved a comprehensive comparison of treatment costs between both alternatives, implemented uniformly under analogous conditions and assumed similar performance across all cases.