scholarly journals Life-Cycle-Based Greenhouse Gas, Energy, and Economic Analysis of Municipal Solid Waste Management Using System Dynamics Model

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1641
Author(s):  
Duan Lu ◽  
Asad Iqbal ◽  
Feixiang Zan ◽  
Xiaoming Liu ◽  
Guanghao Chen

Sustainable municipal solid waste (MSW) management is a critical issue that requires planning in accordance with population growth, urbanization, and living standards. An evaluation that integrates system dynamics (SD) is newly built for identifying the interactions between social activities to predict future MSW generation. In this study, SD-based greenhouse gas (GHG), energy, and economic evaluations were conducted for MSW management in the Southern Tai Lake Watershed (STWL) area in China. The considered SD factors include the gross domestic product (GDP) growth, total population, population growth, MSW generation per capita, and MSW generation charges. The results indicate that the current MSW strategy (S1) does not perform well in GHG, energy, and cost evaluation, and the current landfill capacity will be depleted in 2022. Co-processing the landfilled waste with fresh MSW in incineration plants (S7) is the most favorable strategy, which indicates the current landfill capacity will be sufficient for the ash generated from incineration over the next decade. S7 also emits 1.5–3 times less GHG, recovers 2–3.2 times more energy, and obtains 1.3–2.0 times more economic benefits than S1 during 2020–2030. This study offers valuable insights regarding the dynamics of MSW generation and an approach to determine an optimal MSW management strategy for the future.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 1673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunlin Xin ◽  
Tingting Zhang ◽  
Sang-Bing Tsai ◽  
Yu-Ming Zhai ◽  
Jiangtao Wang

The Chinese government is committed to ensuring separation of municipal solid waste (MSW), promoting the integrated development of the MSW management system with the renewable resource recovery system, and achieving construction of ecological civilization. Guided by the methods in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under five waste disposal scenarios in Beijing under the life cycle framework were assessed in this research. The study included collection and transportation, as well as three end disposal methods (sanitary landfill, incineration, and composting), and the emission reduction benefits of electricity generation from incineration and recycling of renewable resources were taken into account. The results show that an emission reduction benefit of 70.82% could be achieved under Scenario 5 in which kitchen waste and recyclables are sorted and recycled and the residue is incinerated, and the selection of the optimal strategy was not affected by changes in the separation rate. In addition, landfill would emit more GHG than incineration and composting. The results of this study are helpful for the government to make a decision on MSW management considering the goal of GHG emission reduction.


Author(s):  
Brian Bahor ◽  
Keith Weitz ◽  
Andrew Szurgot

Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is internationally recognized for its potential to be both a source and mitigation technology for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Historically, GHG emission estimates have relied upon quantitative knowledge of various MSW components and their carbon contents, information normally presented in waste characterization studies. Aside from errors associated with such studies, existing data do not reflect changes over time or from location to location and are therefore limited in their utility for estimating GHG emissions and mitigation due to proposed projects. This paper presents an alternative approach to estimate GHG emissions and mitigation using the concept of a carbon balance, where key carbon quantities are determined from operational measurements at modern municipal waste combustors (MWCs).


2021 ◽  
pp. 0734242X2098392
Author(s):  
Paul Selvam Michel Devadoss ◽  
Agamuthu Pariatamby ◽  
Mehran Sanam Bhatti ◽  
Santha Chenayah ◽  
Fauziah Shahul Hamid

The studies on municipal solid waste (MSW) management in Pakistan and its impacts on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are glaringly missing. Therefore, this study examines the effect of MSW management on GHG emissions in Pakistan and suggests the best suitable strategies for alleviating GHG emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2006 waste model (WM) was used to create inventory of GHG emissions from landfilling. The solid waste management GHG (SWM-GHG) calculator and strengths–weaknesses–opportunities–threat (SWOT) analyses were used as strategic planning tools to reduce GHG emissions by improving MSW management in Pakistan. The IPCC 2006 WM estimated 14,987,113 metric tonnes (Mt) carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq) of GHG emissions in 2016. The SWM-GHG calculator, on the other hand, estimated 23,319,370 Mt CO2-eq of GHG emissions from management of 30,764,000 Mt of MSW in 2016, which included 8% recycling, 2% composting, and 90% disposal in open dumps. To reduce GHG emissions, two strategies including recycling-focused and incineration-focused were analysed. The recycling approach can reduce more GHG emissions than incineration, as it can reduce 36% of GHG emissions (as compared to GHG emission in 2016) by recycling 23% of MSW, anaerobically digesting 10% of MSW, and disposing of 67% of MSW in sanitary landfills (with energy recovery). Moreover, the SWOT analysis suggested integration of the informal sector, adoption of anaerobic digestion and formulation of explicit MSW regulations for improving the current management of MSW which will also result in lower GHG emissions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-449
Author(s):  
Riham A. Mohsen ◽  
Bassim Abbassi ◽  
Animesh Dutta ◽  
David Gordon

More light is being shed continually on the environmental impacts of municipal solid waste due to the increasing amounts of waste generated and the related greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions from MSW account for 20% of Canadian greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and accordingly, waste legislation in Ontario demands high waste recovery and a moving towards a circular economy. This study evaluates the current municipal solid waste management in the City of Guelph and assesses possible alternative scenarios based on the associated GHG emissions. Waste Reduction Model (WARM) that was developed by the US-EPA has been used to quantify the GHG emissions produced over the entire life cycle of the MSW management scenario. Sensitivity analysis was also conducted to investigate the influence of some scenarios on the overall GHG emissions. It has been found that one ton of landfilled waste generates approximately 0.39 ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2Eq). It was also found that the current solid waste scenario has a saving of 36086 million ton of CO2Eq (MCO2Eq). However, the results showed that the scenario with enhanced waste-to-energy, reduction at source and recycling has resulted in a high avoided emissions (0.74 kg CO2Eq/kg MSW). The anaerobic Digestion scenario caused the lowest avoided emissions of 0.39 kg CO2Eq/kg MSW. The net avoided emissions for reduction at source scenario were found to be the same as that found by the current scenario (0.4 kg CO2Eq/kg MSW). The sensitivity analysis of both reduction at source and recycling rates show a linear inverse proportional relationship with total GHG emissions reduction.


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