Non-negligible greenhouse gases from urban sewer system

BACKGROUND: The urban sewer system is an important component of urban water infrastructure for sewage collection and transportation, and in-sewer transportation of sewage can cause multitudinous contaminant degradations which lead to formation of gaseous products. Although the greenhouse gases of methane and carbon dioxide have been confirmed to consist in the gaseous products, the mechanisms of greenhouse gas generation were unclear and the significances of greenhouse gases emission from sewers were generally underestimated. RESULTS: In this study, 3 years of monitoring was conducted to evaluate the greenhouse gases emission in 37-km-long urban sewer systems covering 13 km(2). The results showed that the emission of carbon dioxide and methane was extensively existing in sewers, and especially, exhibited a characteristic of regional difference. In order to reveal the formation mechanism of carbon dioxide and methane in sewers, the metagenomic approach was utilized to analyze the annotated pathways and homologous bio-enzymes, and it indicated that fourteen pivotal annotated pathways were involved in the carbon dioxide and methane generation. According to the metagenomics and 3-year monitoring results, the total amounts of carbon dioxide and methane emission in sewers were calculated by the transformation venation of contaminants (such as methyl alcohol, methylamine and acetic acid along branch sewer, sub-main sewer and main sewer, respectively). The calculation results showed that the total greenhouse gas emissions in sewer were calculated to be 199 t/day in Xi’an, and if scaling up as population proportion, the greenhouse gas emission from sewer systems in China could be 30,685 t/day. Comparing with the greenhouse gas emissions from different metropolises (New York City, London and Tokyo) and industries (dairy farms, automobile production and steel enterprises), the amount of greenhouse gases produced by the urban sewer system is much higher. CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed the transformation pathways of contaminants which promoted the generation of greenhouse gases in sewers. Based on this analysis, the greenhouse gas emissions along sewer systems were calculated. The results indicate that the greenhouse gas emission from sewer systems is non-negligible, and should be attracted sufficient attention. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13068-019-1441-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.