Life cycle assessment of disposal of residues from municipal solid waste incineration: Recycling of bottom ash in road construction or landfilling in Denmark evaluated in the ROAD-RES model

Life cycle assessment of resource recovery from municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash

“…the same order of magnitude); however, across the 100-year time horizon used in this instance, the impact of using BA as aggregate in road was slightly greater than the landfill case, thereby reflecting the lower L/S ratio reached in the landfill scenario. This result was in agreement with previous studies by Birgisdóttir et al (2007) and Toller et al (2009). Furthermore, in scenarios A and C, Cu made the greatest contribution to the impact on ET, as also reported by other authors (e.g.…”

“…The comprehensive scope of assessment methodologies such as life cycle assessment (LCA) is suitable for identifying environmental benefits, problem shifting and breakeven points, and criticality related to the management of MSWI BA. Several studies have applied LCAs to analyse specific aspects of MSWI BA valorisation as a support for the implementation of new sorting systems or utilisation options (Barberio et al, 2010;Birgisdóttir et al, 2007;Boesch et al, 2014;Margallo et al, 2014;Meylan and Spoerri, 2014;Muchova, 2010;Toller et al, 2009) or to compare waste management systems where incineration and MSWI BA management are included (Georgeson, 2006;Kuusiola et al, 2012). However, so far, critical aspects such as the influence of recovered metal quality have not been addressed in LCA studies, and often impacts related to pollutants released into the environment during BA utilisation have been disregarded.…”

Material Resources, Energy, and Nutrient Recovery from Waste: Are Waste Refineries the Solution for the Future?

“…The impact assessment followed recent recommendations for best practice within LCA (32). The following assessment methods were used: IPCC 2007 for GW (33), accumulated exceedance for AC (34), EUTREND for EP (N) (35), and Usetox for ETw and HT (36). For AC, Danish regionalized characterization factors were used for SO 2 , NO x and NH 3 .…”

“…Ferrous and non-ferrous metals were recovered from bottom ashes (BA) prior to utilization as construction material substituting natural gravel (36). The recovery efficiency was set to 85%…”

“…With respect to incineration residues, bottom ashes from incineration were assumed utilized as construction material substituting natural gravel (36). APC residues were assumed to be utilized in the backfilling of old mines following the approach of (38).…”