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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Water and Wastewater Management
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1453468

The characteristics and estimation of greenhouse gas emission in the urban sewer system

Provisionally accepted
龙杰 李 龙杰 李 Jilong Ren Jilong Ren *
  • Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The urban sewer system is a vital facility for the collection and transportation of urban domestic sewage. The carbon emission fluxes in sewer systems and the microbial community structure in sewer sediments remain unclear. In this study, a sewer system located in southern China was utilized to investigate the water quality characteristics, carbon emission flux, and microbial community structure in sediment. The results showed that the COD loss rates in the branch pipe and sub-main pipe were 27.1% and 14.1 %, respectively. The estimated carbon emission flux revealed a total carbon emission flux from the sewer system was 1.39 kg CO 2 -eq/m 3 and the methane and carbon dioxide emissions accounted for 62% and 36.4% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. Microbial community structure analysis revealed that methanogenic archaea in the sediments of the branch pipes and sub-main pipes were Methanobacterium, Methanosaeta, and Methanobrevibacter. This study estimated the greenhouse gas emission fluxes and assessed the methanogenic activity of sewer sediments. Based on this analysis, the microbial community structure of sewer sediments was revealed. The results demonstrated that the branch pipe and sub-main pipe were the main sources of carbon emission in the sewer system. This study furnishes novel insights for the control of carbon emissions in municipal sewage systems.

    Keywords: Sewage, wastewater, carbon emission flux, Methane, sediment, microbial community

    Received: 23 Jun 2024; Accepted: 11 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 李 and Ren. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jilong Ren, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.