Municipal solid waste is an issue every community in the world has to be concerned with. Without any management, municipal solid waste poses environmental and health risks to the community such as from water and air pollution. In selecting methods to deal with the waste, environmental impacts considerations are important to reduce these risks. Environmentally sustainable waste management processes should also decrease greenhouse gases contributing to global warming and climate change. Waste to energy (WtE) processes lessens and replaces the use of fossil fuels reducing greenhouse gases. The research aims to assess the environmental impacts and energy recovery of WtE processes, specifically incineration or energy recovery facilities (ERF) and anaerobic digestion (AD) to select suitable options or any combinations thereof as part of an integrated waste management system for different locations and conditions by using life cycle assessment (LCA) methods. WRATE (Waste and Resources Assessment Tool for the Environment) an LCA model is used to assess scenarios designed systematically with different combinations of incineration/ERF and AD. The study also varies other factors such as different recycling schemes and recycling rate, household waste composition and population density to determine the suitable combinations for different local conditions. Results for both UK and Thailand confirm the need to reduce disposal of waste into landfills. The scenario with Incineration/ERF for heat recovery and a post collection recycling scheme and the combination scenario with Incineration/ERF for heat recovery and Anaerobic Digestion for vehicle fuel a post collection recycling scheme lead the ranking for most energy recovery and less environmental impacts. The parameter exerting the greatest influence on LCIA of these set of scenarios is WtE technology. Second is recycling scheme with recycling rate as a subset. Third is energy recovery type. Population density also affects the outcome slightly by the magnitude of the values.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:628706 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Tawatsin, Anuda |
| Contributors | Heaven, Sonia |
| Publisher | University of Southampton |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/366530/ |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds