The evaluation of environmental performances of solid urban waste management systems is a very important issue to achieve a sustainable development. Recycling and reusing a large fraction of waste products yields environmental benefits that can be widely enhanced by adopting energy recovery systems for the remaining waste fraction. Recovering energy from solid urban waste means reducing both fossil fuels consumption and landfill needs. Furthermore, exhaust gases from combustion process can be efficiently cleaned by adopting a modern scrubbing system. Instead, large fraction of the solid exhaust part of the combustion process can be considered quite inert. This implies that the energy recovery process, when possible, is one of the best ways to reduce the environmental impact of waste disposal. In this work, a real case, relative to an Italian city of 100.000 inhabitants, has been examined. Improvements, consisting of electrical power production from the wastes organic fraction anaerobic treatment, to the actual situations have been suggested. An LCA analysis has been performed to evaluate the environmental impact of the actual situation and of the improved one. Environmental benefits, strictly linked to the energy production increase, have been pointed out
Life Cycle Assessment for Municipal Solid Waste Management Improvements
DI MARIA, Francesco;SAETTA, Stefano Antonio
2004
Abstract
The evaluation of environmental performances of solid urban waste management systems is a very important issue to achieve a sustainable development. Recycling and reusing a large fraction of waste products yields environmental benefits that can be widely enhanced by adopting energy recovery systems for the remaining waste fraction. Recovering energy from solid urban waste means reducing both fossil fuels consumption and landfill needs. Furthermore, exhaust gases from combustion process can be efficiently cleaned by adopting a modern scrubbing system. Instead, large fraction of the solid exhaust part of the combustion process can be considered quite inert. This implies that the energy recovery process, when possible, is one of the best ways to reduce the environmental impact of waste disposal. In this work, a real case, relative to an Italian city of 100.000 inhabitants, has been examined. Improvements, consisting of electrical power production from the wastes organic fraction anaerobic treatment, to the actual situations have been suggested. An LCA analysis has been performed to evaluate the environmental impact of the actual situation and of the improved one. Environmental benefits, strictly linked to the energy production increase, have been pointed outI documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
