Abstract
According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) guidelines, when calculating CO2 emissions, CO2 emissions from biomass should be excluded from the total amount of CO2 emissions and should be separately reported due to their “carbon neutrality”. Sewage sludge is one of the representative biomass fuels. It is mixed with fossil fuels to achieve greenhouse gas reduction or is used by itself as a fuel to replace fossil fuels. According to the results of this study, biomass fractions of both the sewage sludge and the sewage sludge incineration exhaust gases did not amount to 100%. At present, in many countries (South Korea, Japan, and Germany), when calculating greenhouse gas emissions from sewage sludge incinerators, all CO2 emissions from sewage sludge are judged to be biomass and only the greenhouse gas emissions that correspond to non-CO2 gases are calculated as greenhouse gas emissions. However, since, according our results, the content of sewage sludge is not 100% biomass, if CO2 emissions are excluded according to the existing greenhouse gas emission calculation method, the amount of emissions may be underestimated. Therefore, to accurately calculate greenhouse gas emissions from a sewage sludge incinerator, CO2 emissions should be calculated in consideration of the fossil carbon fractions of sewage sludge.
Highlights
70% of sewage sludge in South Korea was disposed using the sea dumping method; sea dumping of sewage sludge has been completely prohibited since 2011 pursuant to the London Dumping Convention amended in 1996 [1]
The present study aims to figure out how biomass fraction should be applied when greenhouse gas emissions in sewage sludge incineration facilities are calculated
We planned to analyze the biomass fraction of sewage sludge inputted into sewage sludge incineration facilities and the biomass fraction of gases collected from final incineration and to compare the resultant values to figure out the biomass fraction of sewage sludge incineration facilities
Summary
70% of sewage sludge in South Korea was disposed using the sea dumping method; sea dumping of sewage sludge has been completely prohibited since 2011 pursuant to the London Dumping Convention amended in 1996 [1]. Sewage sludge management is a growing problem, especially in highly populated areas [3]. Incineration, with its advantages of large sewage sludge weight reduction effects, excellent stability, and transformation of sewage sludge into solid fuel, has come to the fore as an alternative for sewage sludge disposal. Due to these advantages, incineration has become the main method of sewage sludge disposal in many countries, including Germany and Japan [4,5,6]. Sewage sludge is one of the representative biomass fuels. It is mixed with fossil fuels to achieve greenhouse gas reduction or is used by itself as a fuel to replace fossil fuels [7,8,9]
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