Determining Efficiency of Wastewater Treatment Plants' Energy Intensity

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are facilities with a large potential for energy savings and improvements, but the factors behind their efficiency remain largely unstudied. In this thesis, a limited study toward developing a benchmarking tool to allow comparison of operation of WWTPs in terms of energy intensity (EI) will be analyzed. While the comparison of WWTPs is very complex, an initial start with comparing EI will be a useful tool. The methodology for this will first involve a literature review into EI at WWTPs to understand current statistics. After this, publicly available data gathered by Department of Energy sponsored Industrial Assessment Centers (IAC) from 2009 to 2021 of WWTP EI will be studied to show the potential for improvement of EI. This comparison can highlight certain states that currently exhibit more efficient plants, change in efficiency over time, as well as compare specific treatment technologies in literature to the general data gathered from the IAC. Lastly, the first step toward development of this benchmarking tool is a study of the 13 WWTP operations analyzed by the Arizona State University (ASU) IAC using a data envelopment analysis (DEA). This DEA can begin to show how a tool could be used with more data to accurately compare and benchmark a WWTP based on performances of similar WWTPs. This tool could allow operators a possibility of seeing how well their performance compares, and work toward an improvement in their EI.