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Life-cycle energy impacts for adapting an urban water supply system to droughts

Overview of attention for article published in Water Research, October 2017
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Title
Life-cycle energy impacts for adapting an urban water supply system to droughts
Published in
Water Research, October 2017
DOI 10.1016/j.watres.2017.10.016
Pubmed ID
Authors

Ka Leung Lam, Jennifer R. Stokes-Draut, Arpad Horvath, Joe L. Lane, Steven J. Kenway, Paul A. Lant

Abstract

In recent years, cities in some water stressed regions have explored alternative water sources such as seawater desalination and potable water recycling in spite of concerns over increasing energy consumption. In this study, we evaluate the current and future life-cycle energy impacts of four alternative water supply strategies introduced during a decade-long drought in South East Queensland (SEQ), Australia. These strategies were: seawater desalination, indirect potable water recycling, network integration, and rainwater tanks. Our work highlights the energy burden of alternative water supply strategies which added approximately 24% life-cycle energy use to the existing supply system (with surface water sources) in SEQ even for a current post-drought low utilisation status. Over half of this additional life-cycle energy use was from the centralised alternative supply strategies. Rainwater tanks contributed an estimated 3% to regional water supply, but added over 10% life-cycle energy use to the existing system. In the future scenario analysis, we compare the life-cycle energy use between "Normal", "Dry", "High water demand" and "Design capacity" scenarios. In the "Normal" scenario, a long-term low utilisation of the desalination system and the water recycling system has greatly reduced the energy burden of these centralised strategies to only 13%. In contrast, higher utilisation in the unlikely "Dry" and "Design capacity" scenarios add 86% and 140% to life-cycle energy use of the existing system respectively. In the "High water demand" scenario, a 20% increase in per capita water use over 20 years "consumes" more energy than is used by the four alternative strategies in the "Normal" scenario. This research provides insight for developing more realistic long-term scenarios to evaluate and compare life-cycle energy impacts of drought-adaptation infrastructure and regional decentralised water sources. Scenario building for life-cycle assessments of water supply systems should consider i) climate variability and, therefore, infrastructure utilisation rate, ii) potential under-utilisation for both installed centralised and decentralised sources, and iii) the potential energy penalty for operating infrastructure well below its design capacity (e.g., the operational energy intensity of the desalination system is three times higher at low utilisation rates). This study illustrates that evaluating the life-cycle energy use and intensity of these type of supply sources without considering their realistic long-term operating scenario(s) can potentially distort and overemphasise their energy implications. To other water stressed regions, this work shows that managing long-term water demand is also important, in addition to acknowledging the energy-intensive nature of some alternative water sources.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 120 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 120 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 24 20%
Student > Master 22 18%
Researcher 13 11%
Student > Doctoral Student 8 7%
Student > Bachelor 6 5%
Other 15 13%
Unknown 32 27%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Engineering 31 26%
Environmental Science 16 13%
Social Sciences 3 3%
Chemical Engineering 3 3%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 2 2%
Other 16 13%
Unknown 49 41%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 14 October 2017.
All research outputs
#20,663,600
of 25,382,440 outputs
Outputs from Water Research
#8,102
of 11,877 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#258,690
of 333,675 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Water Research
#133
of 199 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,382,440 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 10th percentile – i.e., 10% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 11,877 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 5.0. This one is in the 23rd percentile – i.e., 23% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 333,675 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 12th percentile – i.e., 12% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 199 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 13th percentile – i.e., 13% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.