Emergy evaluations for constructed wetland and conventional wastewater treatments

Based on emergy synthesis, this study presents a comparative study on constructed wetland (CW) and conventional wastewater treatments with three representative cases in Beijing. Accounting the environmental and economic inputs and treated wastewater output based on emergy, different characteristics of two kinds of wastewater treatments are revealed. The results show that CWs are environment-benign, less energy-intensive despite the relatively low ecological waste removal efficiency (EWRE), and less cost in construction, operation and maintenance compared with the conventional wastewater treatment plants. In addition, manifested by the emergy analysis, the cyclic activated sludge system (CASS) has the merit of higher ecological waste elimination efficiency. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.