Technical and Environmental Comparison among Different Municipal Solid Waste Management Scenarios

Deborah Panepinto,Mariachiara Zanetti

doi:10.3390/su13063167

Deborah Panepinto, Mariachiara Zanetti

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063167

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Mar 13, 2021
Citations: 12	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Polytechnic University of Turin

Abstract

In order to determine the optimal final destination of municipal solid waste, it is necessary to consider both monetary costs and environmental externalities, as well as the local availability of waste-processing industrial infrastructure. The paper examines the results obtained from a technical, economic, and environmental comparison between different scenarios for waste management: in particular, the solutions of gasification and pyrolysis were studied and, afterwards, were compared with direct combustion in incineration plant (from the point of view of the thermal treatment) and final disposal in landfill. In order to perform this analysis, 19 plants operating on full scale were analyzed. The comparison took into account environmental, energy, and economic aspects. From the environmental and energetical point of view, the tool of mass and energy balance was used to address some key environmental aspects. In particular, some indexes were defined in order to perform a comparison among the different analyzed solutions. As concerns the economic point of view, conventional economic criteria were considered. The analysis showed advantages for the examined thermal treatment solutions. The comparison methodology that has been defined can establish a more general useful approach in order to help the definition of the best solution for waste management planning.

Highlights

In order to determine the optimal final destination of municipal solid waste, it is necessary to consider the monetary costs and the environmental externalities, such as carbon balance and greenhouse gas (GHG) production [1]
While upgrading to the best available technology (BAT) might lead to a substantial reduction in the emissions of a particular pollutant, this high improvement could increase the level of released carbon dioxide
For determining the avoided emissions from landfill, instead of using life cycle assessment (LCA) and modeling software such as GaBi [23] or SimaPro, we considered only the stoichiometry of conversion [1]: it can be established that for 100 g of municipal solid waste (MSW), there is a generation of 29.78 g of CH4 and 58.91 g of CO2

Summary

Introduction

In order to determine the optimal final destination of municipal solid waste, it is necessary to consider the monetary costs and the environmental externalities, such as carbon balance and greenhouse gas (GHG) production [1]. For a given location, the availability of waste-processing industrial infrastructures (separation plants, waste to energy (WtE) systems, final landfills, other innovative solutions) or the cost of their construction must be taken into account. In order to obtain a complete picture of the waste-processing system, the total energy expenditure of that system must be considered [2,3]. (early 2010), the primary method adopted for municipal solid waste treatment is waste separation in the collection process, with the goals of reuse and production of recycled materials. In northern Italy, for example, separation levels have reached about

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