Urban solid waste plant treatment in Brazil: Is there a net emergy yield on the recovered materials?

Agostinho, Feni; Almeida, C.M.V.B.; Bonilla, Sílvia H.; Sacomano, José Benedito; Giannetti, Biagio F.

doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2013.02.001

Cited by 38 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Instead, humandominated systems are typically incapable of continuously re-using all waste flows, which puts increased pressure on the environment in terms of pollution as well as ever-increasing depletion of natural While a number of waste management case studies have already been investigated by emergy analysts (Brown and Buranakarn, 2003;Marchettini et al, 2007;Lei and Wang, 2008;Amponsah et al, 2011;Yuan et al, 2011;Zhang et al, 2011;Mu et al, 2011;Agostinho et al, 2013;Giannetti et al, 2013;Liu et al, 2013;Song et al, 2013), it seems reasonably safe to conclude that coherent and agreed-upon methodological guidelines as to how to approach this particular field of application are still lacking. On the other hand, a large body of scientific and technical literature exists in which LCA has been used as the method of choice when tackling waste management systems from the point of view of their energy and environmental performance from a user-side perspective (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dealing with waste products and flows in life cycle assessment and emergy accounting: Methodological overview and synergies

Bala

Raugei

Ripa

et al. 2015

Ecological Modelling

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This paper considers the different approaches taken in dealing with waste products and flows in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Emergy Accounting (EMA), from a methodological point of view, and aims to develop more standardized and synergistic procedures. LCA deals with the waste issue from the point of view of the impact of their disposal, as well as the potential benefit ('environmental credit') afforded by the avoided extraction and processing of additional primary resources when waste is recycled or its energy content recovered. The 'environmental burden' associated to the entire production and consumption chain leading to the waste item is generally not included in LCAs of waste management systems, due to the boundary being placed - consistently with the intended goal - around the actual disposal processes (including recycling alternatives and associated environmental credits). Instead, Emergy Accounting, a donor-side approach with its implicit boundary set at the biosphere level, in principle keeps track of the entire supply-chain at all times, considering even waste flows as products (or co-products), and calculating their intensity factors and assessing their role within the ecosystem's web and hierarchy. However, when the focus is limited to evaluating processes under human control, within the narrower space and time boundary of human-dominated production and consumption processes, waste products can arguably be regarded as something to be recycled or disposed of to minimize the environmental burden. When this is the case, and particularly in comparative analyses, the emergy perspective thus becomes closer to the LCA perspective and interesting methodological synergies may emerge. A clearly defined set of emergy algebra rules for waste products and flows, and specifically for recycling, was found to be still lacking in the available emergy literature. We propose here that a better and more consistent methodological solution may be arrived at by leveraging the work done in LCA

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dealing with waste products and flows in life cycle assessment and emergy accounting: Methodological overview and synergies

Bala

Raugei

Ripa

et al. 2015

Ecological Modelling

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“…In this study the possible differences in the composition of the MSW of big cities and small towns are not considered, but, in some cases, it occurs. In this paper it was considered that all the plastics, glasses and metals have been previously separated from the MSW, it is that 13.5% of plastics, 2.4% of glasses and 2.9% of metals were separated from the MSW before the treatment for recycling, in accordance with the NPSW [27]. It was considered that all the paper and cardboard in MSW (15%) is contaminated and it will be used together with the organic matter for the production of the Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF).…”

Section: Physical Composition Chemical Properties and Energy Contentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the same primary separation process, all the non-recyclable tailings are separated and taken to the sanitary landfill. After the primary separation, the ferromagnetic materials (iron and steel) are separated by electromagnet equipment and the remaining organic material and paper are sent to the next section (mechanical treatment) [15,16,27].…”

Section: Primary Separationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Techno-economic analysis of municipal solid waste gasification for electricity generation in Brazil

Luz

Rocha

Lora

et al. 2015

Energy Conversion and Management

165

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“…The use of emergy analysis, proposed by [25], is an attempt to enable the calculation of flows of different type of resources with different units. [26] calculated the emergy benefits of urban solid waste treatment, while [27] used emergy analysis to assess the benefits of material recycling. However, there are no studies so far aiming to assess the emergy benefits of waste mining for RDF production process.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Mass Balance Method for Assessing Emergy Benefit of Waste Mining for Refuse Derived Fuel Production

Meidiana¹,

Mashita²

2017

IJESD

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Abstract-Waste mining has been implemented in Gresik City since 2013. The aged waste is processed into refuse-derived fuel (RDF) for Cement Industry. The study objects to calculate the benefit of waste mining activity using emergy analysis. Mass balance analysis assesses total waste flow for separation, composting, and RDF production. Waste separation done by 72 scavengers in landfill contributes 1.54% waste reduction (1.3 ton waste) and 228.5 US$/day income by selling them to middle man. Meanwhile, 265.6 ton aged waste excavated from landfill is screened, shredded and processed into 72.68 ton/day RDF type 2. By-product of this process is 184.32 ton/day residue (soil-like substances) used for land reclamation. RDF produced from landfill can substitute coal consumption in cement industry for 4.25 years. Emergy calculation comes to the result that waste treatment in landfill through scavenging, composting and waste mining contributes gross emergy benefit of 2.14E+22 seJ/yr. Index Terms-Landfill, refuse derived fuel, mass balance analysis, Emergy analysis.

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Urban solid waste plant treatment in Brazil: Is there a net emergy yield on the recovered materials?

Cited by 38 publications

References 32 publications

Dealing with waste products and flows in life cycle assessment and emergy accounting: Methodological overview and synergies

Dealing with waste products and flows in life cycle assessment and emergy accounting: Methodological overview and synergies

Techno-economic analysis of municipal solid waste gasification for electricity generation in Brazil

A Mass Balance Method for Assessing Emergy Benefit of Waste Mining for Refuse Derived Fuel Production

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