Life cycle assessment of a very small organic Rankine cycle and municipal solid waste incinerator for infectious medical waste

Abstract

This research aims to study the environmental impact of a very small organic Rankine cycle (VSORC) combined with a municipal solid waste incinerator (MSWI). A life cycle assessment (LCA) of eighteen midpoint and three endpoint levels under the ReCiPe method was performed by using the SimaPro database. A functional unit of 1 kWh and a life span of 20 years were considered in the LCA study. From the study results, it can be found that the VSORC-MSWI unit can process cleaned infectious medical waste in the form of refuse-derived fuel type 3 (RDF-3) at a mass flow rate of 184.42 kg/h to produce a power of 23.65 kWe for an overall system efficiency of 0.91%. In the LCA results, all of the midpoint impact categories are considerably driven by the use of steel, while the endpoint values include a human health metric of 2.20E−07 DALY, an ecosystem quality of 2.03E−10 species⋅y, and a natural resource value of 1.18E−02 $. The main effect is driven by the construction, operation, and decommissioning phases, which occupy approximately 87.16%, 11.94%, and 0.90%, respectively. All of the environmental impacts can be summarized as a single score of 0.000348 Pt.