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Life Cycle Assessment of Rainwater Harvesting Systems at Building and Neighborhood Scales and for Various Climatic Regions of the U.S.

Devkota, Jay P
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1449871956

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, Civil Engineering.
Rainwater harvesting can be a strategy to address challenges with urban water and wastewater infrastructure such as leakage, underfunding energy usage and combined sewer overflow. Rainwater harvesting system has been used for centuries to meet urban water demands such as toilet flushing, lawn irrigation, cleaning and recreational activities. Of these uses of harvested rainwater, toilet flushing is more common as it constitutes a higher percentage of indoor water use. Life cycle assessment is becoming a powerful tool to estimate environmental sustainability of rainwater harvesting systems. With growing interest in rainwater harvesting systems, it is now essential to understand and estimate the factors affecting its environmental sustainability to better design the system as well as to provide a framework for future researchers. Three research needs were identified and addressed in this study. Knowing that the prior studies lacks generalization of results to other cases, a water demand to supply ratio (D/S) ratio was proposed and demonstrated to estimate environmental impacts from rainwater harvesting systems. A decision framework was also proposed based on the result to help designers and practitioners estimate the environmental impacts without much effort. This study hypothesized that there is a lack of consistency in the analysis of rainwater harvesting systems. Supply and demand based approach was compared for rainwater harvesting system at ten climatic regions with one cubic meter of rainwater supplied and sanitation service in the building throughout its life time as respective functional units. Unexpectedly, the result showed that the region with lower environmental impact for one functional unit did not necessarily have lower impacts for the other functional unit making it clear that regional preference for rainwater harvesting system depends on the specific goal to be met: using harvested rainwater as a potential supplemental source versus using it to meet the water demand needs. Implementation of rainwater harvesting system also depends on the scale of its implementation. A suburban neighborhood was selected to demonstrate the environmental sustainability of different rainwater harvesting implementation strategies (decentralized, centralized and partly centralized). The result showed that the stormwater reduction from rainwater harvesting system mainly depends on the downspout connectivity. A selection framework was also proposed to select the system with lower environmental impact based on downspout connectivity, soil type and the centralized, partly centralized, or decentralized strategy. The results of this study are expected to help designers and policy makers choose environmentally attractive rainwater harvesting scenario by looking into different factors such as building characteristics (roof area, occupancy), method of analysis and scale of implementation.
Defne Apul, Dr. (Committee Chair)
Steven Burian, Dr. (Committee Member)
Ashok Kumar, Dr. (Committee Member)
Gruden Cyndee, Dr. (Committee Member)
Seo Youngwoo, Dr. (Committee Member)
216 p.
Civil Engineering; Environmental Engineering; Water Resource Management
Rainwater Harvesting System, Life Cycle Assessment, Combined and Separate Sewer, Neighborhood Scale Rainwater Harvesting System, Functional Unit, Demand and Supply, Alternative Sanitation Technology

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Devkota, J. P. (2015). Life Cycle Assessment of Rainwater Harvesting Systems at Building and Neighborhood Scales and for Various Climatic Regions of the U.S. [Doctoral dissertation, University of Toledo]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1449871956

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Devkota, Jay. Life Cycle Assessment of Rainwater Harvesting Systems at Building and Neighborhood Scales and for Various Climatic Regions of the U.S. 2015. University of Toledo, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1449871956.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Devkota, Jay. "Life Cycle Assessment of Rainwater Harvesting Systems at Building and Neighborhood Scales and for Various Climatic Regions of the U.S." Doctoral dissertation, University of Toledo, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1449871956

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

toledo1449871956
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© 2015, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Life Cycle Assessment of Rainwater Harvesting Systems at Building and Neighborhood Scales and for Various Climatic Regions of the U.S. by Jay P Devkota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Toledo and OhioLINK.