EASEWASTE—life cycle modeling capabilities for waste management technologies

Abstract

Background, aim, and scope The management of municipal solid waste and the associated environmental impacts are subject of growing attention in industrialized countries. European Union has recently strongly emphasized the role of LCA in its waste and resource strategies. The development of sustainable solid waste management systems applying a life cycle perspective requires readily understandable tools for modeling the life cycle impacts of waste management systems. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate the structure, functionalities, and LCA modeling capabilities of the PC-based life cycle-oriented waste management model EASEWASTE, developed at the Technical University of Denmark specifically to meet the needs of the waste system developer with the objective to evaluate the environmental performance of the various elements of existing or proposed solid waste management systems. Materials and methods The EASEWASTE model supports a full life cycle assessment of any user-defined residential, bulky, or garden waste management system. The model focuses on the major components of the waste and reviews each component in terms of the available waste management options, including biogasification and composting, thermal treatment, use on land, material sorting and recycling, bottom and fly ash handling, material and energy utilization, and landfilling. In order to allow the use of the model in an early stage where local data may be limited, default data sets are provided for waste composition and quantities as well as for the waste technologies mentioned above. The model calculates environmental impacts and resource consumptions and allows the user to trace all impacts to their source in a waste treatment processes or in a specific waste material fraction. In addition to the traditional impact indicators, EASEWASTE incorporates impact categories on stored ecotoxicity, specifically developed for representation of the long-term impacts of persistent pollutants in landfilled waste. The model reports data at any stage of the LCA and supports identification of most sensitive parameters as well as overall sensitivity analysis and material balances for all substances passing through the system. Results and discussion The structure of the model is presented, and its functionalities are demonstrated on a hypothetical case study based on waste data from a large Danish municipality. The aim of the case is to demonstrate new waste treatment technologies and their modeling capabilities as well as the LCA modeling capabilities in EASEWASTE to identify the most important impact categories and the main sources of contributions to these in the system for treating the waste. Based on the results, the modeling features, user flexibility, and transparency of the EASEWASTE model are discussed. Conclusions EASEWASTE is demonstrated to be a versatile and detailed (engineering) model with a strong differentiation of individual fractions, but it requires an engineering background to use all the features. The model is especially developed for the...

State of the art preliminary literature review: Sustainability and waste reporting capabilities in management systems

“…The found 28 studies had 93 unique authors, from which only Christensen contributed more than one publication. He was one of the authors in publications [10] and [16]. Then by analyzing the found publications based on their publication channels, this study found three journals that included more than one article, contributing to the list of found 28 studies.…”

Benefit analysis of carbon emission reduction in the pilot construction of"zero-waste city " in Chongqing

“…the Technical University of Denmark has developed the EASEWASTE model (Environmental Assessment of Solid Waste System and Technologies) based on LCA, which quantifies the mass flow of substances and energy production and consumption (such as electricity and heat) in solid waste collection, transportation and different disposal processes (anaerobic digestion and composting, heat treatment, land use, resource sorting and recycling, landfill, etc. ), a spects such as energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and the environmental performance of disposal technologies (Bhander et al,2010). The SWM-GHG model (Solid Waste Management Green-House Gas) developed by the IFEU Institute in Germany was developed to compare different treatment schemes of municipal organic waste (including municipal organic waste), so the quantification of the environmental impact of different disposal technologies is relatively detailed, but the disposal technology included is rel atively limited (Bhander et al,2010).…”

“…), a spects such as energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and the environmental performance of disposal technologies (Bhander et al,2010). The SWM-GHG model (Solid Waste Management Green-House Gas) developed by the IFEU Institute in Germany was developed to compare different treatment schemes of municipal organic waste (including municipal organic waste), so the quantification of the environmental impact of different disposal technologies is relatively detailed, but the disposal technology included is rel atively limited (Bhander et al,2010). The CO2ZW model (CO2 Zero Waste) developed by the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, is an Excel -based calculator that provides basic data sets for each stage of solid waste disposal in Mediterranean European c ountries, using specific waste data sets to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from municipal solid waste (Itoiz et al,2013).…”