Environmental Modelling and Software 135 (2021) 104898

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Environmental Modelling and Software

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/envsoft

A web application to estimate the carbon footprint of constructed wetlands

Pedro Andreo-Martínez a, b, *, Víctor Manuel Ortiz-Martínez c, Andrés Muñoz d,
Pablo Menchón-Sánchez d, Joaquín Quesada-Medina b
a
Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Murcia, Campus of Espinardo, 30100, Murcia, Spain
b
Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Murcia, Campus of Espinardo, 30100, Murcia, Spain
c
Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Cartagena, Campus Muralla del Mar, E-30202 Cartagena, Spain
d
Polytechnic School, Catholic University of Murcia, Murcia, 30107, Spain

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Constructed wetlands (CWs) are engineering systems recognized as an efficient and sustainable option to
Constructed wetlands wastewater treatment. Due to the growing interest in CWs for waste management, the number of works analyzing
Wastewater treatment their footprint and impact has risen in the last years. Thus, the study of these systems and their components in
Carbon footprint
construction, operation, and demolition phases is important to characterize the technology and achieve a fully
Web application development
environmental-friendly approach. Until now, no complete tools for measuring both direct and indirect green­
house gas (GHG) emissions in CWs have been reported in the field. Some efforts in this line are Life Cycle
Assessment tools, which can be economically expensive and usually require specific training. Therefore, this
work aims to present a web application as an open and complete tool for the estimation of GHG emissions in
CWs, including both direct and indirect emissions and considering all the stages involved in their management.

1. Introduction CH4, and CO2, including emissions as a consequence of the energy

Over the last 200 years, the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in
the atmosphere has increased due to anthropogenic causes such as fossil
fuel production and use, agricultural and industrial activities, and the
unsustainable exploitation of natural resources (El-Fadel and Massoud,
2001). These anthropogenic GHG emissions are recognized as primarily
responsible for global warming (GW) and climate change (Escriva-Bou
et al., 2018). If current emission levels are sustained over time, they may
lead to potentially catastrophic changes in climate patterns. Moreover,
evidence suggests that researchers have been conservative in their pre­
dictions in this sense (Brysse et al., 2013). While a reduction in GHG
emissions, particularly CO2, could help to a global temperature stabili­
zation, this challenge imperatively requires international cooperation
and commitment as those reached at the Paris conference in December
2015, recently ratified and reinforced at the Madrid conference in
December 2019 (Obergassel et al., 2020). In turn, “abatement” tech­
nologies are needed to reduce GHG emissions and the associated nega­
tive effects (de_Richter et al., 2016).
In line with this, the objective of wastewater treatment is to reduce
the environmental impact caused by waste discharges. However, this
process can also contribute to GHGs through the production of N2O,
required in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). The CH4 produced
from wastewater treatment was found to account for about 5% out of
global CH4 emissions (El-Fadel and Massoud, 2001). Among the new
abatement technologies for wastewater treatment are constructed wet­
lands (CWs), which are engineered systems designed for the utilization
of natural processes such as wetland vegetation, soils, and microbial
assemblages to assist in wastewater treatment (Vymazal, 2014). Besides,
CWs have proved to work at the same efficiency levels as those achieved
in WWTPs (Kadlec and Wallace, 2008; Muñoz et al., 2006; Vymazal,
2014; Wu et al., 2014).
When analyzing the impact of CWs, it is important to compare the
emissions generated in these systems with the emissions resulting from
the operation of conventional WWTPs (Søvik and Kløve, 2007). As a
representative case, Chen et al. (2011) quantified and compared the
GHG emissions per m3 of treated wastewater in a horizontal sub-surface
flow constructed wetland (HF-CW) and in a cycle active sludge system
(CASS), obtaining 0.20 and 0.74 kg CO2eq, respectively. Taking into
account these figures together with the fact that more than 100,000 CWs
worldwide currently treat over one million m3 of water per day (Türker
et al., 2014), it can be estimated that up to 540,000 Kg CO2eq per day
could be saved due to the use of CWs. Therefore, the widespread use of

* Corresponding author. Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Murcia, Campus of Espinardo, 30100, Murcia, Spain.
E-mail address: pam11@um.es (P. Andreo-Martínez).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2020.104898
Accepted 6 October 2020
Available online 10 October 2020
1364-8152/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
P. Andreo-Martínez et al.
CW technology to treat wastewater could contribute to mitigating global
warming, among many other environmental benefits.
Over the last years, the scientific community has estimated/evalu­
ated GHG emissions by CWs from a holistic perspective using the life
cycle assessment (LCA) methodology (Chen et al., 2011; Dixon et al.,
2003; Fuchs et al., 2011; Lopsik, 2013; Machado et al., 2007; Pan et al.,
2011; Uggetti et al., 2012; Zhao and Liu, 2013). LCA is a method used for
compiling and evaluating the inputs, outputs, and potential environ­
mental impacts of a product or service throughout its whole life cycle
and it is regulated by the ISO-14040 (2006) and ISO-14044 (2006) se­
ries. Besides, LCA is data-intensive and requires a lot of high-quality
databases. Specifically, “its key issues are spatial boundaries, the time
scale over which life cycle comparison is made, the scale at which
comparison is made and the level of detail into which the study goes
into” (Lopsik, 2013).
A large number of full LCA tools and databases, including several of
great quality and detail, can be found elsewhere (see section 2.2).
However, to the best of authors’ knowledge, there are still no available
databases to calculate direct GHG emissions generated in wastewater
treatment in CWs (e.g., denitrification, nitrification, or methano­
genesis). As indicated in the review reported by Mander et al. (2014),
the detailed and accurate datasets available in this field could be
structured and exploited for database development. On the other hand,
there are plenty of databases available to calculate indirect GHG emis­
sions that could be used for estimations related to the construction,
operation, management, energy consumption, and demolition of CWs.
Nevertheless, these indirect emissions can be very different from direct
ones (Chen et al., 2011; Zhao and Liu, 2013). Hence, both direct and
indirect emissions must be taken into account to offer an exhaustive
view of the impact posed by CWs, which requires the design of specific
LCA tools.
LCA tools can be economically expensive and usually require specific
training, so their management is frequently limited to the engineering
community. They can also carry high complexity in terms of structure to
be implemented in CW projects intuitively and LCA software normally
runs natively only in Windows operating systems. Thus, this work aims
to present an open web application for calculating GHG emissions in
CWs and devoted to anyone interested in the field. For this purpose,
reported data of the scientific literature have been considered according
to the LCA methodology for the estimation of direct and indirect GHG
emissions and integrated into a web application to offer a useful tool for
emission calculation in CWs.
The present paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents a
background in CWs and associated LCA methodologies. In section 3, the
materials and methods used in this work are detailed. Section 4 shows
the main results of the web application designed for calculating GHG
emissions in CWs. Finally, Section 5 summarizes the conclusions of this
work.
2. Related work
This section reviews the relevance of CWs as an alternative tech­
nology for wastewater treatment with several advantages over conven­
tional processes in terms of GHG emissions. It also analyzes several well-
known LCA methods and software tools that have been specifically
applied or developed in the field.
2.1. Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment
Constructed wetlands are engineering systems recognized as an
efficient and sustainable option for wastewater treatment. CWs utilize
the natural processes involving wetland vegetation, soils, and associated
microbial community. These systems are based on reed beds with
several advantages over traditional technologies including activated
slugged processed and trickling filters (Scholz and Lee, 2005; Vymazal,
2014). Conventionally, CWs have been applied for the treatment of
2
Environmental Modelling and Software 135 (2021) 104898
municipal wastewater but, over the last years, their use has extended to
the treatment of industrial and agricultural wastewater, among others
(Vymazal, 2019).
The main advantages of CWs are: (i) these systems provide a cost-
efficient treatment solution both in terms of investment and operation;
(ii) CWs can operate without the addition of other chemical substances
used in conventional treatment plants, lowering the associated envi­
ronmental impacts; (iii) the number of resources needed, including en­
ergy consumption, is significantly reduced; and (iv) production of by-
products are minimal in CW operation since sludge can be accumu­
lated and dewatered within the system. It is worth noting, however, that
CWs cannot directly compete with conventional technologies when it is
required to treat high volumes of wastewater as in urban areas due to the
need for large tracts of land. In this case, CWs could be used as com­
plementary technology (Stefanakis, 2020).
CWs are frequently classified according to the water flow direction
and the type of vegetation used. In this sense, CW systems are usually
planted with rooted emergent macrophyte species. According to the
flow pattern, they can be classified into two main groups, free water
surface CWs and subsurface flow CWs. In the first case, water flows over
substrate media creating a free water surface of few centimeters of
depth. In subsurface flow CWs, water flows through a porous substrate
and, in such case and depending on the specific flow direction, the
systems within this group can be subdivided into horizontal and vertical
subsurface flow CWs (HF and VF, respectively) (Giraldi et al., 2010;
Stefanakis et al., 2014). The main difference between both typologies is
that in horizontal systems there is no water surface exposed to the at­
mosphere, as water horizontally flows below the substrate porous me­
dium. It is also possible to find hybrid CWs combining both vertical and
horizontal stages (Vymazal, 2013).
The significance of CWs has increased over the last years and are
subjected to intensive research to overcome their limitations through
innovative strategies and approaches. The most important limitations of
the systems are related to the necessity of large land areas, the possible
dependence of treatment efficiency as a result of seasonal conditions
which promotes changes in environmental conditions, the resistance
capacity of bio-components to the presence of toxic compounds and the
lack of standard and optimal designs for widespread used. CWs act as
sources, sinks, or transformers of compounds according to the system
configuration, hydrological conditions, and water residence time.
Therefore, important factors influencing treatment capacity are flow
type, substrate features, plant species used, hydraulic loading rate and
temperature (Hijosa-Valsero et al., 2010; Maier et al., 2009; Pálfy et al.,
2017; Vymazal, 2019).
In line with the increasing interest in CWs, the number of studies
analyzing their footprint and impacts has risen in the last years. To
create sustainable technological solutions based on these systems, it is
important the proper selection of construction materials and operating
conditions that make it possible to minimize the impact on the envi­
ronment (Fuchs et al., 2011; Machado et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2018).
This way, CWs would represent not only an advantageous wastewater
treatment but also a fully environmental-friendly approach (Gkika et al.,
2015). In this context, this work tries to offer a useful tool for the esti­
mations of footprints of CWs through an open web-based application
that helps to analyze the impact of the systems according to the char­
acteristics and operating conditions.
2.2. Methodologies and software tools for life cycle assessment in
constructed wetlands
Some of the most relevant tools for LCA are Impact 2002+ (Jolliet
et al., 2003), ReCiPe (Lopsik, 2013), and SimaPro (Fuchs et al., 2011).
Firstly, Impact 2002+ is a methodology that combines two damage
models: midpoint-oriented method and endpoint-oriented method. The
methodology incorporates different categories of medium impact
(human toxicity, respiratory effects, ionizing radiation, ozone depletion,
P. Andreo-Martínez et al.
photochemical oxidant formation, aquatic and terrestrial eco-toxicity,
aquatic eutrophication, terrestrial eutrophication and acidification,
land cover, global warming, non-renewable energy and mineral
extraction). Through the midpoint categories, the inventory results are
linked to four categories of endpoint damage, which in this case also
correspond to the areas of environmental protection: human health,
ecological system quality, climate change and resources. The normali­
zation factors are based on the European average values such as annual
impact scores for an average citizen.
Regarding the ReCiPe methodology, it utilizes indicators of emission
characterization and indicators of resource use to score the relative
severity of a category for an environmental impact. ReCiPe calculates
the characterization factors at the middle and end levels. Thus, there are
18 midpoint indicators and 3 endpoint ones. Midpoint indicators focus
on unique environmental problems such as climate change or acidifi­
cation. Endpoint indicators show environmental impact at the three
highest levels: effects on human health, biodiversity, and resource
scarcity. Converting mid-points to endpoints simplifies the interpreta­
tion of results. However, the uncertainty in the results increases with
each simplification.
Finally, SimaPro is a tool that allows the evaluation of the environ­
mental impacts of products (either services or goods), activities and
processes. It also allows LCA to be carried out using both bibliographic
databases and databases created by the users themselves. SimaPro is also
able to store, analyze and track the environmental performance of ser­
vices and/or products. This tool facilitates the analysis and graphical
representation of complex cycles in a systematic and insightful way. This
software includes a user interface, a life cycle unit process database, an
impact assessment database, and a calculator that combines the data­
bases according to the modeling entered through the user interface.
Apart from the above methodologies, there are some specific tools
for the construction sector such as DuboCalc (Davidson and Wir, 2003)
and PaLATE (Nathman, 2008). The former calculates all the effects of
material and energy consumption from the conception of the project to
the end of its life, or from extraction to demolition and the reuse phase.
All relevant environmental effects during the entire life cycle are
included in the calculation. Likewise, PaLATE (Pavement Life-cycle
Assessment Tool for Environmental and Economic Effects) takes the
information entered by the user for the design, initial construction,
maintenance, equipment usage, and costs of a road. In this manner,
PaLATE provides results for the environmental effects and costs of the
pavement and road life cycle. The environmental effects investigated
include energy consumption and emissions of CO2, NOx and PM10,
among others.
In general, all these software tools and methodologies are imple­
mented as desktop applications and commonly developed in Excel,
which requires installations on the user’s computer. Our approach is to
offer a web-based tool to be used anywhere without the need of
installing specific software. Furthermore, these methodologies and ap­
plications are more focused either on general products and services or
towards specific engineering works, and therefore, their databases have
a different target to the goal of estimating the carbon footprint of CWs
that is proposed in this work.
3. Material and methods
This section firstly explains the sources and methods used for data
gathering and for calculating GHG emissions in CWs. Then, the meth­
odology and software tools used to develop the web application are
explained in detail.
3.1. Design of a constructed Wetland database
At the end of 2012, 3787 publications were dealing with CWs, cor­
responding to the period from 1991 to 2011. The number of publications
for the years 2017 and 2018, predicted by previous field growth models
3
Environmental Modelling and Software 135 (2021) 104898
based on the data from the two previous decades, is three times higher
than in 2011 (Zhi and Ji, 2012), which was recently proved elsewhere
(Andreo-Martínez et al., 2020). This shows that this is a research field of
great interest to the scientific community.
Given the substantial increase in scientific works on technologies for
the mitigation of GHG effects, a specific spreadsheet for the estimation
of the carbon footprint emitted by CWs was developed in 2018 by the
authors of the present manuscript. The LCA methodology was used for
this purpose (Martínez-Rocamora et al., 2016), in which the final
amount of emitted GHGs by CWs is calculated as the sum of all emissions
of all the elements taken into account, expressed as kg of CO2eq per m3 of
wastewater treated, among other parameters. The system boundaries
include construction, operation and demolition phases. The assembly of
the system together with the emissions and sources associated with each
considered component are detailed in the Supplementary material.
Although some authors have excluded the end of life of the in­
frastructures and equipment assuming that this stage has not significant
influence on the overall impact (Corbella et al., 2017), other authors
reported that these indirect emissions should be taken into account
(Lopsik, 2013). The spreadsheet was divided into three sections: “ma­
terials and construction”, “operation” and “summary”. In addition,
concepts not previously considered in other works such as the drafting
phase of the engineering project, the possible construction of an oper­
ation house, or the excavation work in the construction and demolition
phases were also considered.
Once the data and calculations related to all the development stages
in CWs were gathered in a spreadsheet, the next step was the creation of
a web application to query these data and calculations. The development
of this web application arises as a more friendly-user tool in comparison
to a spreadsheet.
3.2. Development of a web application for constructed wetlands
The development of the web application has followed the SCRUM
methodology (Schwaber and Beedle, 2001). SCRUM is an agile meth­
odology that allows adapting to change in project requirements in a
rapid manner, based on iterations or sprints that enable an incremental
development of the application. In this project, the role of Product
Owner (namely, the responsible for monitoring and optimizing the
technical value of the application) was taken by Dr. Joaquín
Quesada-Medina, Head of Green Chemical Process Engineering research
group of University of Murcia at that time. Dr. Pedro Andreo-Martínez
acted as the Scrum Master, i.e. the responsible for coordinating the
development team, which in turn was composed of the three remaining
authors of this paper. A total of 6 sprints plus a Sprint 0 (kick-off iter­
ation) were needed for the development of the application, comprising a
total of 255 h with an initial product backlog of 55 user stories and 430
story points, which yields an average of 1.7 story points per hour
approximately.
This section highlights the main software artifacts utilized in the
development of the web application following this methodology,
namely the software architecture of the application, the database and
the user interface design.
The technologies employed in the development of the web applica­
tion are Apache Server and PHP language for the back-end, whereas the
front-end has been developed through the frameworks CodeIgniter and
Bootstrap using the jQuery library and the JavaScript language. The
database has been implemented using the MySQL database management
system. The application has been developed in a Docker container to
ease its deployment in any environment.
3.2.1. Architecture of the web application
The software architecture of the web application follows the Model-
View-Controller (MVC) design pattern (Leff and Rayfield, 2001). In this
approach the users are shown a view they interact with. This view
launches requests that are processed by the controllers using the models
P. Andreo-Martínez et al.
(usually, a database) to retrieve the information. This information is
processed and sent back to the views to be shown to the user. This design
pattern decouples these components allowing code reusability and
parallel development.
Fig. 1 shows a scheme of the application architecture following the
MVC pattern and how the different components interact with each other
to manage the information from the user to the database and vice versa.
The View components indicate the different interfaces (web pages in this
case) by which the user can interact with the application. Apart from the
Fig. 1. Web application architecture based on the MVC pattern.
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Environmental Modelling and Software 135 (2021) 104898
sign-in and sign-up operations, the user can manage the information
about the emission factors and materials from the CW, create projects to
calculate the CW emissions through the Operation view and obtain a
summary report for each project. As an example, the materi­
als_construction view shows information to the user about the different
emission factors of the CW materials and at the same time the user can
insert, update or delete this information in the database. When the user
updates the information, the materials_construction controller is called
again and it uses the materials model to save the information using the
P. Andreo-Martínez et al. Environmental Modelling and Software 135 (2021) 104898

insert() method.

3.2.2. Database
Our database is based on two main types of tables:

• The emission factor tables, which are the tables where the different
factors eligible for emission calculations are stored. These data are
taken from the spreadsheet indicated in section 3.1. Table 1 shows
the complete list of these tables in the database to represent all the
available emission factors and Fig. 2 shows a specific table for the
concept “Constructed_Wetland” as an example.
• The administration tables that help to manage the application. These
tables allow managing the creation of projects and users for emission
calculations, checking the different emission factors chosen during
the execution of a test, as well as storing the different calculations
obtained. These tables are identified with the prefix "tbl_" in order to
differentiate them from the previous ones. Table 2 shows the com­
plete list of these tables, whereas Fig. 3 shows a partial view on the
design of the database for the application (for the sake of readability,
Fig. 2. Table representing the emission factors for constructed wetlands.
only the most relevant tables are shown in the figure).

Note that, as shown in Fig. 3, three options of CWs (bed 1 and 2 with Table 2
a slope of 45◦ and bed 3 with a slope of 30◦ ) have been considered in List of tables in the database for managing the user’s application data and
case of using a hybrid system with different dimensions, fillers or emission calculations.
configurations. Administration Tables

tbl_project tbl_electrical tbl_pipes

3.2.3. User interface design
tbl_users tbl_electricity tbl_pretreatment_situ
With the aim of increasing the usability of the proposed tool, several tbl_excavation tbl_pretreatment_tank
principles of user interface design have been adopted that can be found tbl_hut tbl_project_draw
elsewhere (Lynch and Horton, 2016; Stone et al., 2005). In particular, tbl_operation_electricty tbl_pumps
we have chosen a minimalistic design to avoid information overload. tbl_operation_maintenance tbl_wetland1
tbl_operation_params tbl_wetland2
The use of Bootstrap templates has helped greatly in achieving this tbl_operation_wetland tbl_wetland3
minimalistic design. Moreover, the web pages are written using HTML5
and CSS3 allowing the incorporation of widgets that help to show the
results and graphs obtained from the carbon footprint calculation in a 4. Results and discussion
separate and clear manner. These web pages follow a responsive web
design to avoid screen size problems. 4.1. Web portal
The interface allows the user to work interactively with the different
calculation options and returns a real time response when the calcula­ The web application for managing CWs emissions is deployed at
tions are submitted. Moreover, documentation is shown throughout the https://crftpr.herokuapp.com/ and it is available in English. After
main input data elements to guide the user in the introduction of data, signing up, the user is presented with the home page shown in Fig. 4. The
especially for the “Materials and Construction” section. Errors are top menu shows the different sections into which the application is
controlled by preventing the user from entering wrong values (e.g., divided, namely Materials & Construction, Operation (data entry views),
entering text in numeric fields). Summary (where the results are shown) and Emission Factors where
The process of the user interface design aimed to improve the user such factors used in the calculations are shown. The left menu allows
experience is a process that should be continuously revisited. In this first controlling the project being worked on, creating new ones or resetting
version of the tool, the interface offers a minimalistic design that com­ an existing one.
plies with some of the most relevant usability principles, as the ones The use of the web application is fully guided through detailed in­
mentioned above. structions written in each web page of the application, helping the user
to introduce the required data.

Table 1
4.2. Validation of the web-based application
List of tables in the database for representing emission factors.
Emission Factor Tables
The validation of the web-based application was accomplished using
artificial_stones Lights rocks_stones the data of carbon footprint generated by different types of constructed
bulk_materials Liners special_select_materials wetlands previously reported in the scientific literature. The works
Cables liquids_density_factors Streetlights
Ceilings Manholes Vehicles
considered were selected according to the parameters employed for
Concrete Materials wetland_emissions carbon footprint calculation (Chen et al., 2011; Pan et al., 2011; Uggetti
constructed_wetland materials_density_factors Windows et al., 2012; Zhao and Liu, 2013). Specifically, these works used at least
construction_materials mortars_mixes Woods the seven following parameters for the estimation of greenhouse gas
Doors office_emissions
emissions: size type of constructed wetland, amount of wastewater to be
electrical_panels Partitions
Facings Pavements treated, influent and effluent characteristics, energy consumption and
Floors Pipes operating time. This criterion was fixed since the carbon footprint of
Fuel Polymers constructed wetlands (CO2eq emissions) calculated by the web applica­
Griller Pretreatment tion considered these parameters as the basics for estimation.
Lamps Pumps
However, the application allows the introduction of a large number

5
P. Andreo-Martínez et al.
Fig. 3. Relational model for the administration tables (partial view). The “project” table is the core concept which aggregates the rest of tables for calculating the
different emission factors related to the elements of a CW (electricity, pumps, excavation, etc.). Note that the “user” table allows managing the users in the
application and their emission calculation projects.
of additional parameters to offer a holistic approach of the process and
to obtain a realistic and accurate estimation of CO2eq emission. On the
other hand, as a specific case, in those processes in which sludge treat­
ment is performed with no energy consumption requirements, the
minimum number of parameters necessary to calculate the amount of
CO2eq emitted is reduced to 4 (type and size of the constructed wetland,
flow to be treated and operating time) (Uggetti et al., 2012).
Table 3 summarizes the technical and operating parameters of the
constructed wetlands reported in the literature and used for comparison
and validation purposes in this work. These data include the parameters
needed for the calculation of carbon footprint in terms of CO2eq through
the developed web application. It is worth noting that the types of
constructed wetland comprised cover both horizontal flow (HF) and
vertical flow (VF) systems, with varying sizes (from 210 to 2000 m2) and
wide operating time horizon (from 1 to 20 years). Moreover, two types
of main functionalities are included, treatment of wastewater (with
standard flow rates from 200 m3/day) and treatment of sludge (sludge
drying). Thus, the data include varying operating conditions and designs
for constructed wetlands.
The carbon footprint of the constructed wetlands (CO2eq emissions)
reported in the selected works are compared with the estimations
calculated with the web application in Table 4 for its validation. As can
be seen, the relative differences between both values can significantly
vary in each case, the greatest relative difference between the reported
and estimated values being of 21.9% and the smallest relative difference
of 5%, respectively. Although the relative differences can be deemed
relatively high in some cases (21.9% and 20.4%), it is considered that
6
Environmental Modelling and Software 135 (2021) 104898
relative differences in terms of GHG emissions of up to 183% are usual.
In turn, these differences lie in the type of LCA database used (Martí­
nez-Rocamora et al., 2016). On the other hand, the relative differences
for 4 out of 6 estimations performed are below or equal to 16.6%, which
can be considered negligible. Therefore, given these results, the devel­
oped web application for the calculation of the carbon footprint (CO2eq)
of CWs can be considered as an effective tool.
4.3. Running example
The web application proposed in this work was used to calculate the
CO2eq emissions generated in a pig farm as a case of study. The exploi­
tation facilities are located in the south-east of Spain and include 4200
units of breeding stock. The facilities and characteristics of the pig farm,
data for the construction phase of the wetland and additional technical
data necessary to calculate the amount of CO2eq emitted are summarized
in Table 5.
As observed in Table 5, the parameters considered are related to both
the construction phase and the operating horizon time of 20 years. The
estimation of the CO2eq emissions calculated by the Excel spreadsheet
and the web applications were compared to observe any possible dif­
ferences. The results obtained with the Excel spreadsheet were 2.21 kg
CO2eq per m3 of purified slurry and 0.44 kg CO2eq per Kg of BOD5
removed. The results achieved with the web application were identical,
which validates its implementation. The total CO2eq emissions include
the construction, operation and elimination phases of the wetland sys­
tem. The comparison of both estimations is provided as Supplementary
P. Andreo-Martínez et al. Environmental Modelling and Software 135 (2021) 104898

Fig. 4. a) Materials and construction windows of the web application: b) Operation window of the web application; c) Top summary window of the web application;
d) Bottom summary window of the web application.

Table 3
Technical and operating data for constructed wetlands reported in the literature (VF: vertical flow, HF: horizontal flow).
Reference Constructed wetland Size (m2) Treated flow rate (m3/ BOD5 influent (mg/ BOD5 efluent (mg/ Operating time
type day) L) L) (years)

(Chen et al., 2011) VF 602 200 47.05 6 20

Zhao & Liu (2013) VF 460 200 50.62 ± 7.6 26.47 ± 3.2 20
HF 900 200 42.71 ± 11.4 21.35 ± 4.5 20
(Pan et al. 2011) VF 2000 (two 1000 m3 68 186 17.8 1
tanks)
1
(Uggetti HF 210 28.76Kgsludge day− – – 10
et al.,2012)

Material. Therefore, in view of the results obtained, it can be concluded

Table 4
that the use test was satisfactory. Furthermore, the web application of­
Validation of web application with reported CO2eq emissions of constructed
fers several advantages: (i) no software installation required since access
wetlands.
it is possible using a browser (ii) no requirement for specific operating
Reference Type of Reported Web Relative systems nor the installation of additional applications, (iii) access is free
constructed emissions application difference (%,
wetland calculation ABS)
and the application is free of licenses, (iv) it can be used anywhere
simply with Internet access. On the other hand, in terms of CO2eq
Chen et al. VF 0.20 kg 0.19 kg CO2eq 5
emissions, the results of the current study show that the construction
(2011) CO2eq m− 3 m− 3
4.75 kg 4.61 kg CO2eq 2.9 phase has a significant impact on the environment when compared to
CO2eq kg kg DBO−5 1 the use phase for 20 years. Fig. 5 shows the relative contribution of
DBO−5 1 general concepts to the total CO2eq emissions as well as the total emis­
Zhao and VF 0.09 kg 0.10 kg CO2eq 11.1 sion per each phase (construction, operation and elimination phase of
Liu CO2eq m− 3 m− 3
(2013) HF 0.18 kg 0.21 kg CO2eq 16.6
the CW). In comparison to the other authors, Larsen and Hauschild
CO2eq m− 3 m− 3 (2008) have noted that although some authors argue that the impact
Pan et al. VF 3.18 kg 2.53 kg CO2eq 20.4 from the construction phase is negligible in the context of the whole life
(2011) CO2eq kg kg DBO−5 1 cycle and that, therefore, this phase can be excluded from analysis, the
DBO−5 1
construction phase impact may be of importance for a certain type of
Uggetti HF 2.1 kg CO2eq 1.64 kg CO2eq 21.9
et al. (tn (tn sludge)− 1 treatment systems (e.g. wetlands, sand filter, conventional active sludge
(2012) sludge)− 1 treatment, microfiltration and ozoning). Vlasopoulos et al. (2006) re­
sults show that the environmental impact of the construction phase can
account for 1–96% of the total impact of the treatment system,

7
P. Andreo-Martínez et al. Environmental Modelling and Software 135 (2021) 104898

Table 5
Data considered for the estimation of CO2eq emissions in CWs.
Activity/operation/parameter Quantification

Operating horizon time 20 years

Slurry flow rate to be treated
BOD5 in influent
Objective BOD5 in the effluent
Project engineering preparation
Storing shed for farm implements,
electrical panels, and pumps
Construction phase of the wetland
system
Heavy machinery for the
construction phase
Auxiliary electrical equipment in the
construction phase
Pretreatment system
HF constructed wetland
Piping and pumps
Additional piping and pumps
Semi-liquid manure separator
Truck for sludge removal
Truck for vegetation removal
Vehicle for maintenance transport
323.3 m3 day− 1
5000 mg L− 1
25 mg L− 1
150 h
2.5 × 2.5 × 2.5 m, fiber cement roof,
1 door and 1 window, electrical panel, 10 plugs
and switches, 2 thermal magnetos, 200 m of cable,
a light bulb and a lamppost on the outside
60 working hours
excavator (97 hp) a truck (300 hp)
20 kW/h working for 40 h
27 PE sedimentation tanks of 12,000 L
11,844 m2, 45◦ slope walls and with infill layers
made up of different aggregates
350 m of PVC piping (Ø 140 mm), 135 air pumps
and 23 water pumps
100 m of piping, 40 air pumps and 10 substitution
water pumps during the life of the system
4.25 kW/h, working 2.5 h a day
170 hp, working 80 h per year
170 hp, working 20 h per year.
109 hp, working 40 h per year

depending on the technology and impact assessment methods, espe­

cially in the case of CWs. Therefore, the web application can be used to
obtain a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the system on the
environment.

5. Conclusion and future works

Constructed Wetlands (CWs) have gained growing importance as a

sustainable alternative for wastewater treatment with recognized ad­
vantages over conventional technologies, including low energy con­
sumption. The widespread use of these systems, either as single
Fig. 5. a) Relative contribution to total CO2 emission and b) total CO2
technology for wastewater treatment in small capacity facilities or as eq eq
emission per phase.
complementary units in high capacity installations, could contribute to
increasing the sustainability in the treatment of water discharges and to
environment. In addition, project cloning to facilitate data entry,
the mitigation of emissions in this type of operation. Therefore, the
sending and sharing of projects between users or adaptation to mobile
analysis of the impact of CWs in terms of GHG emissions is required to
devices could also be implemented in future versions of the application.
characterize the systems and to deploy fully sustainable CW options. In
this context, a web-based application for calculating CO2 emissions in
CW systems is presented, taking into account all the stages involved in Declaration of competing interest
their management. The web application is intended to offer an effective
tool that is freely accessible through https://crftpr.herokuapp.com/ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
since no complete tools for measuring direct and indirect GHG emis­ interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
sions generated in CWs are available. Validation tests and a running the work reported in this paper.
example have been performed to demonstrate the accuracy of the web
application proposed in this work. The application allows the calcula­ Acknowledgments
tion of the overall CO2eq emissions according to the characteristics and
operational variables of installations, and it also provides the CO2eq This work was partially supported by the Fundación Séneca del
emissions generated in the different phases (construction, operation, Centro de Coordinación de la Investigación de la Región de Murcia
and demolition stages). Thus, a comprehensive tool for the assessment of under Project 20813/PI/18 and by the Spanish Ministry of Science,
CW impacts has been reported. Innovation and Universities under Project RTC-2017-6389-5.
As a limitation of this work, it should be noted that the usability of
the application has not been evaluated yet by external users. Therefore, Appendix A. Supplementary data
we do not have any report on how intuitive and user-friendly the tool is
perceived by them. In order to obtain feedback on the usability of the Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
application, we plan to conduct a survey among the registered users as a org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2020.104898.
future work.
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