Integrated technology assessment based on LCA: A case of fine particulate matter control technology in China

Abstract

The establishment of a systematic and complete technical evaluation method for air pollution treatment that can effectively prevent secondary pollution is urgently needed to realize coordinated emission reduction. Based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) method, a multi-criterion method for the assessment of air pollution control technologies is proposed by integrating four indicator categories of environmental, economic, technological, and societal aspects. The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) are also employed in this method to enhance the strength of performing the weights and matrix calculation for selecting the control technologies. Five selected fine particulate matter control technologies for coal-fired power plants are used as research objects, including the electrostatic precipitator (ESP), the bag filter (BF), the electrostatic-bag precipitator (E-BSP), the wet electrostatic precipitator (WESP), and the low-low temperature electrostatic precipitator (LLT-ESP). LLT-ESP ranked first over the other technologies on the due to less resource inputs during the construction phase and less electricity consumption in operation phase, if only based on the LCA results. The final integrated assessment results demonstrate that the ESP ranked highest under the given scenarios, and this was primarily reflected in economic benefits and technological function portions. ESP was followed by the WESP, LLT-ESP, and E-BSP that had similar performances, while the BF was ranked last. The case study fully embodies the advantages of comprehensiveness and systematization of the proposed method. The proposed multi-criterion method based on LCA can be helpful for synergistic control of air pollution complex.