Mechanical–biological treatment: Performance and potentials. An LCA of 8 MBT plants including waste characterization

Abstract

In the endeavour of avoiding presence of biodegradable waste in landfills and increasing recycling, mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) plants have seen a significant increase in number and capacity in the last two decades. The aim of these plants is separating and stabilizing the quickly biodegradable fraction of the waste as well as recovering recyclables from mixed waste streams. In this study the environmental performance of eight MBT-based waste management scenarios in Spain was assessed by means of life cycle assessment. The focus was on the technical and environmental performance of the MBT plants. These widely differed in type of biological treatment and recovery efficiencies. The results indicated that the performance is strongly connected with energy and materials recovery efficiency. The recommendation for upgrading and/or commissioning of future plants is to optimize materials recovery through increased automation of the selection and to prioritize biogas-electricity production from the organic fraction over direct composting. The optimal strategy for refuse derived fuel (RDF) management depends upon the environmental compartment to be prioritized and the type of marginal electricity source in the system. It was estimated that, overall, up to ca. 180-190 kt CO2-eq. y(-1) may be saved by optimizing the MBT plants under assessment.

Life cycle assessment of different municipal solid waste management options: a case study of Asturias (Spain)

“…Güereka et al (2006), in the case of biowaste management in Barcelona (Spain), find that as a result of producing electricity, biogas production and incineration are the processes that most contribute to reducing impact. Montejo et al (2013) analyze different mechanical biological treatment (MBT) plants in Castile and León (Spain). Their results showed that performance is strongly linked to energy and materials recovery efficiency.…”

“…In fact, numerous studies have been published in recent years in which this tool is applied in the environmental assessment of different scenarios of municipal waste management in different countries, such as Italy (Arena et al, 2003;Cherubini et al, 2009;Blengini et al, 2012), Spain (Güereka et al, 2006;Bovea and Powell, 2006;Montejo et al, 2013), Lithuania (Miliūte and Staniškis, 2009), Brazil (Mendes et al, 2004), Canada (Assamoi and Lawryshyn, 2012), the United States (Vergara et al, …”

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

“…The environmental assessment followed the principles of consequential life cycle assessment (28,29). The functional unit was "treatment of 1 tonne (1 t = 1 Mg, wet weight) of municipal solid waste (MSW)".…”

“…Electricity, heat, and transport fuel (produced from waste incineration or biogas conversion) were assumed to substitute marginal peak-load electricity, district heating, and transport fuel production following the principles of consequential LCA (28,29). For fossil fuels used for electricity and district heating production, coal and natural gas represented two ends of the interval with respect to CO 2 emissions per fuel energy unit.…”

“…These technologies (and therefore the related scenarios) differed for the biological treatment, while the mechanical pretreatment was the same. The data were based on a full-scale MBT plant operated in Spain (28). The plant had four main outputs: ferrous metals, aluminium, OFMSW and solid S29 recovered fuel (SRF).…”