Bioenergy recovery from waste: comparison of different treatment scenarios by LCA

Albini, Elena; Bacchi, Donata; Ferrara, Giovanni; Francini, Giovanni; Galoppi, Giovanni; Lombardi, Lidia; Pecorini, Isabella; Susini, Caterina

doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2018.08.016

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The problem related to electrical and thermal energy allocation in the cogeneration process can be avoided by choosing the primary energy as the functional unit [93]. The case of co-processing sewage sludge and the organic fraction of municipal solid waste shows that anaerobic co-digestion provides better performance than dark co-fermentation, mainly because of the higher energy recovery for electricity and thermal energy production [94]. In looking for better options of cogeneration of waste products, recovery of used cooking oil in cogeneration plants has in general lower values in terms of environmental impacts than its employment in biodiesel production [95].…”

Section: Cogenerationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of the Life Cycle Analysis Results for Different Energy Conversion Technologies

et al. 2022

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Technologies that use renewable energy sources (RES) are crucial to achieving decarbonization goals, but a significant number of studies show their relatively high environmental impact during the production phase. Therefore, technologies need to be compared in terms of their life-cycle environmental impact. The life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology is well known and widely employed. However, problems related to the methodological choices prevent taking full advantage of the LCA, as the results of numerous studies are often incomparable. The presented review aims to critically compare the impact of different energy generation technologies—RES (as well as non-RES) energy generators and co-generators. The numeric results are structured and analyzed in terms of the global warming potential (GWP) and non-RES primary energy consumption. The results show that RES technologies are superior compared to conventional fossil-fuel-based systems in most cases, and the high impact during the production and installation phases is compensated in the operational phase. The high variations in GWP from similar technologies result from different methodological choices, but they also show that the wrong choice of the technology in a certain location might cause serious environmental drawbacks when the impact of the RES technology exceeds the impact of fossil fuel-based technologies. Cogeneration technologies using waste as a fuel may even have a negative GWP impact, thus showing even higher potential for decarbonization than RES technologies.

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Section: Cogenerationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of the Life Cycle Analysis Results for Different Energy Conversion Technologies

et al. 2022

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“…According to Italian literature, the water cycle analysis begins with resource management, namely water availability (Ruini et al, 2015), delivery (D’Ambrosio et al, 2020) and the organisation of the entire system (Del Borghi et al, 2013). Wastewater is then analysed, individually or simultaneously with biowaste (Di Maria et al, 2016) and food waste (Righi et al, 2013) in integrated or dedicated plants (Albini et al, 2018). Many LCA studies investigate different wastewater treatments (Lombardi et al, 2017) and pretreatments (Francini et al, 2019), also focusing on plant characteristics (Longo et al, 2017) and technological optimisation (Tomei et al, 2016).…”

Section: Topics In the Reviewed Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment applied to waste management in Italy: A mini-review of characteristics and methodological perspectives for local assessment

et al. 2021

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Life cycle assessment (LCA) and related tools are commonly used to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of waste treatment scenarios. This manuscript presents a mini-review of studies published over the last 10 years in Italy and aims to investigate how life cycle thinking tools are applied to assess the environmental sustainability of local-level waste policies. Results reveal that different waste flows, technologies and policies have been investigated independently and in varying detail. Review suggests that boundary selection significantly affects LCA results; integration of different waste systems is therefore crucial to avoid spatial or temporal shifts of environmental impacts. Moreover, the description of methodological characteristics, limitations and transversal aspects of Italian waste management studies allows various stakeholders to assess the reliability of past and future research for waste policy planning and rebound effects prevention. This review also highlights the need to define minimum requirements of transparency and ease of reporting of the studies to private and public stakeholders. Finally, the paper investigates whether using both the organisational LCA and the life cycle sustainability approach for the overall waste management process may be useful to develop a standard method to address multi-functionalities and multiple sites.

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“…Except for the aforementioned studies focusing hydrogen production, other studies can also be found when hydrogen generation coupled with other technologies, such as anaerobic digestion, enzyme production, etc. [248,249], which are not discussed in this paper due to the limited scope.…”

Section: Detailed Research Status Progressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organic waste to biohydrogen: A critical review from technological development and environmental impact analysis perspective

et al. 2019

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The increasing worldwide population and rapid urbanization have led to huge amount of fossil fuels consumption and waste generation. The awareness of living in a sustainable society is pushing people to target a low-carbon energy structure. Hydrogen, a carbonfree energy source, draws more and more attention. Particularly, biohydrogen from organic waste calls great interest by generating hydrogen and disposing waste simultaneously. Therefore, the three main technologies converting waste to biohydrogen: biological fermentation, thermochemical gasification and microbial electrolysis cell, were reviewed in this study from both technological and environmental perspective. The results showed that a variety of waste streams have been tested to produce hydrogen and different production efficiency were reported. The most favourable waste material for fermentation and microbial electrolysis cell were different types of wastewater, and agricultural lignocellulosic waste was also intensively studied in fermentation. Whereas wooden waste and municipal solid waste were the two wastes investigated the most in gasification.Optimization of the operational parameters was proved to improve the hydrogen production. However, researches focusing on scale-up of these technologies are still needed. On the other hand, life cycle assessment demonstrated that waste gasification had a better environmental profile compared to other technologies. However, the majority of the reviewed life cycle assessment studies failed to further explain the robustness due to the lack of sensitivity and uncertainty analysis, indicating high quality life cycle assessment studies are needed in the future.

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Bioenergy recovery from waste: comparison of different treatment scenarios by LCA

Cited by 6 publications

References 11 publications

A Review of the Life Cycle Analysis Results for Different Energy Conversion Technologies

A Review of the Life Cycle Analysis Results for Different Energy Conversion Technologies

Life cycle assessment applied to waste management in Italy: A mini-review of characteristics and methodological perspectives for local assessment

Organic waste to biohydrogen: A critical review from technological development and environmental impact analysis perspective

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