<p>The decision process of which technique to choose for remediation of contaminated sites has traditionally focused on the clean up level, the time required and the economical resources. The environmental costs of the remediation are seldom taken into consideration. With a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) it is possible to receive an overall picture of the environmental impacts caused by a remediation technique. In this thesis a comparison of two LCA methods has been made. The methods are named REC and Uva and are used in the Netherlands and Germany. Two remediation techniques, the adsorption technique and the bioremediation technique, were compared and data from a discontinued petrol station were used. The output from the REC method indicated that the adsorption technique causes more environmental costs then the bioremediation technique. The main reason is because the adsorption technique consumes more groundwater and energy. The UvA method presented a different result. According to this method the bioremediation technique causes more environmental costs. This is because the bioremediation technique consumes more energy and causes more emissions. The main reasons of the difference between the REC and the UvA methods are that they use diverse ways to calculate the consumption of energy, have different system boundaries and consider different impact categories. A conclusion of the present study is that a decision process of which remediation technique to use at a contaminated site could be dependent on which method is used as a decision support tool.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:liu-1931 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Andersson, Jenny |
| Publisher | Linköping University, Department of Thematic Studies, Institutionen för tematisk utbildning och forskning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, text |
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