Life Cycle Assessment of Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Management: Case Study Area Around Cement Industry, Cirebon, Indonesia

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful tool to evaluate the environmental impact of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) processing. Here, a BUMDES (village owned enterprise) converted MSW to Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) in the area around a cement plant in Cirebon, Indonesia. The RDF that is produced is used as a partial substitutiton fuels for the kiln in the cement industry. The purpose of present study was to evaluate the environmental impacts of RDF production through an attributional LCA study. The results were compared with the current practice of MSW treatment system. The waste management system that will be compared includes RDF and direct combustion. LCA simulation was conducted in the OpenLCA software, which is equipped with ecoinvent database as well as primary data from the field. The company treated about 2, 259.96 kg of waste / day. The results showed that the production rate of RDF is about 966 kg / day. The analysis shows that the conversion of combustible municipal solid waste into RDF is more environmentally friendly than direct combustion with environmental impacts as follows: GWP 8.40E-01 kg CO2 eq., Acidification 4.36E-04 kg SO2 eq., Eutrophication 7.18E-04 kg PO4 eq., ODP 3.59E-09 kg CFC-11 eq., And Human toxicity 2.27E-01 kg 1.4 dichlorobenzene eq. The use of RDF as a substitute fuel for the cement industry is economically advantageous if: there are no restrictions on processed waste, the RDF product sales to the cement industry is ensured, and the RDF product price should be economically viable. The initial investment costs and high operating as well as the maintenance costs could be a challenging issue when dealing with MSW processing to RDF.