Using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in Comparing the Environmental Impacts of Seawater Reverse Osmosis Desalination Plants with Open Intake and Beach Wells Intake in Chabahar and Kangan Desalination Plants

Increasing water demand and limitation of accessing to freshwater resources have been caused using of seawater desalination in most countries, especially arid and semiarid regions. Duo to the importance of environmental impacts of desalination plants, the present study carried out to comparing the environmental impacts of Chabahar and Kangan desalination plants. Desalting methods is reverse osmosis in both plants. The extraction of the raw seawater in the Kangan plant is beach well intake which supplying indirectly from Persian Gulf and in Chabahar plant is open intake and supplying directly from Oman Seawater. Therefore, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method was used. After preparing a complete inventory of materials and energy at all stages of freshwater production, the environmental impacts of all seawater desalting processes on different environmental impact classes were evaluated using Impact 2002+ version (2.15) and SimaPro9 software. After preparing a complete inventory of materials and energy at all stages of freshwater production, the environmental impacts of all seawater desalting processes on different environmental impact categories were evaluated by using IMPACT 2002+ version (2.15) and SimaPro9 software. According to the results, the greatest impact on both plants were climate change and reduction of primary resources. So that, equivalent 3.224 and 3.627 Kg carbon dioxide has been released and reduced 55.035 and 61.928 MJ in primary sources, in Kangan and Chabahar plants, respectively, as producing 1 m3 of desalinated water. Therefore, it seems that using beach wells intake to extracting seawater in desalination plants is more appropriate.