94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mater.
Sec. Environmental Degradation of Materials
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmats.2025.1566151
Sustainability assessment of different pipeline materials in freshwater supply systems
Provisionally accepted- 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Technology Petronas, Seri Iskandar, Perak Darul Ridzuan, Malaysia
- 2 Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Science, Technology and Management, Ziauddin University, Karachi, Punjab, Pakistan
- 3 Department of Civil, Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Norrbotten, Sweden
- 4 Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, Taif University, Taif, Saudi Arabia
Freshwater supply systems are considered as an important component within urban water systems. Although the development of freshwater supply systems may have significant impact on the environment, there have been only a few studies examining its environmental effects. This paper assesses the environmental impact of four pipeline materials in freshwater supply system using life cycle assessment following ISO 14040-14044 standards. The SimaPro 9.6.0.1 software was used for life cycle analysis. The results indicated that steel has a greater environmental impact in most impact categories during the pipe manufacturing phase than other pipeline materials. During the installation phase, two types of trenches were considered for plastic pipelines and steel pipelines installation and found that the plastic pipe trench experiences its greatest impact during installation phase. To showcase the practicality of the suggested approach, a segment of the Seri Iskandar freshwater supply system was chosen as a case study. The findings revealed that by substituting a portion of the pipes with environmentally sustainable materials, the environmental impact during manufacturing and materials phase of pipelines used for construction of FWSS can be reduced by 14% in fossil resource scarcity, 19% in ozone layer depletion, 20% in ionization radiation, 22% in climate change, and 25% in marine ecotoxicity potential.
Keywords: Pipeline materials, Life cycle sustainability, Fresh water supply system, Environmental Impacts, sustainability
Received: 24 Jan 2025; Accepted: 27 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mir Chohan, Ahmad, Bheel, Najeh and Almaliki. 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:
Imran Mir Chohan, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Technology Petronas, Seri Iskandar, Perak Darul Ridzuan, Malaysia
Taoufik Najeh, Department of Civil, Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, 97187, Norrbotten, Sweden
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.