Techno-economic analysis of integrated wastewater treatment and biomass energy generation technologies: A systematic literature review

Wastewater treatment (WT) and biomass-derived fuel production (BDFP) technologies have had success in the few markets that they have been tested. Also, typically observed is the fact organizations that adopt either of these technologies individually are required by law to implement pollution control/reduction policies. Consequently, there is a prevalent notion that these two technologies are not cost-effective when applied individually to their respective purposes, especially when not aided by subsidies or carbon credits. To address this challenge of cost-effectiveness, there have been a few attempts to integrate both technologies to reduce the financial burden of pollution control/reduction policies, albeit unsuccessful. Engineering Economics literature seems to suggest that this undesirable outcome concerning their integration is the result of a lack of comprehensive Ex-Ante and Ex-Post Techno-Economic Analyses (TEAs) of the integrated technology. To address this challenge, a strategic application of TEA can help decide the most compatible combination of WT and BDFP technologies that either minimizes operational costs or generates economic benefits or both. This work aims to elucidate how extensively TEA has been used in the past to identify an optimal integration of WT and BDFP technologies. The study’s results indicate, though TEA has been used extensively to evaluate various WT and BDFP technologies individually, the same cannot be stated about its use to evaluate an integrated technology.