|Reference : Waste management evolution through years: evaluation of improvement using Life Cycle ...|
|Scientific congresses and symposiums : Unpublished conference/Abstract|
|Engineering, computing & technology : Multidisciplinary, general & others|
Engineering, computing & technology : Energy
Engineering, computing & technology : Chemical engineering
|Waste management evolution through years: evaluation of improvement using Life Cycle Assessment methodology|
|Belboom, Sandra [Université de Liège - ULg > Département de chimie appliquée > Génie chimique - Procédés et développement durable >]|
|Renzoni, Roberto [Université de Liège - ULg > Département de chimie appliquée > Génie chimique - Procédés et développement durable >]|
|Digneffe, Jean-Marc [Intradel > > > >]|
|Léonard, Angélique [Université de Liège - ULg > Département de chimie appliquée > Génie chimique - Procédés et développement durable >]|
|4th International Conference on Engineering for Waste and Biomass Valorisation|
|10-13 September 2012|
|Waste eng Conference series|
|Ecole des mines d'Albi|
|Universidade do Minho|
|[en] Life Cycle Assessment ; Municipal Solid Waste ; Incineration ; Landfill ; Anaerobic digestion|
|[en] Waste is considered as a major concern of our century. New technologies and attempts to improve appeared through years. The goal of this study was to evaluate the improvement of waste management through the last forty years. Four steps of time and of technologies of waste treatment were evaluated in an environmental point of view using the life cycle assessment methodology.
The first scenario is situated before 1970 with waste landfilling in an open dump without recuperation and valorization of gas. The second one considers the situation between 1990 and 2008 with a plant comprising grinding and sorting of waste to obtain refused derived fuel fraction (RDF) which was burnt in an incinerator, remaining waste being sent to sanitary landfill with recuperation and valorization of gas in electricity. The third one is the current one, in operation since 2009, with incineration of the whole of the residual municipal waste. The last scenario is about future considering the current installation and adding a biomethanation plant using the collected biodegradable fraction of household waste.
This environmental evaluation was performed in accordance with the ISO standards 14040 and 14044 and the environmental impacts were calculated with the ReCiPe methodology. We modeled a specific plant situated in Liege using its technical and environmental reports to be as realistic as possible.
Main result of this study is the improvement through years starting from the important environmental impact for the landfilling of waste in an open dump to an environmental gain for some categories with the current installation coupled with biomethanation. Global warming impact from the eighties was reduced by 9 in the years 1990-2008 and by 14 for the current scenario alone or coupled with a biomethanation plant.
Some sensitivity analyses were used to evaluate the strength of assumptions with for example using a consequential LCA instead of an attributional one and modifying the electricity origin mix. An uncertainty analysis using Monte-Carlo method showed the robustness of our results.
This study confirms the environmental improvement of technologies and emissions of waste management through years.
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