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An Integrated Methodology of Life Cycle Assessment and Emergy for Evaluation of Tehran’s Municipal Solid Waste Management System

Falahi Ardakani, Mohammad | 2018

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 50640 (46)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Energy Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Avami, Akram
  7. Abstract:
  8. By changing the approaches towards the waste management, it is possible to affect the resource depletion. This research is focused on economic and environmental impacts of waste production and treatment. In this research, the municipal solid waste management system have been evaluated by an integrated approach considering the Life cycle assessment and Emergy assessment methods. The integrated method have been used to evaluate the waste management system more fundamentally and analyze some upstream indicators which are related to natural resource scarcity. At first, some scenarios have been developed based on Life cycle assessment containing possible configurations of technologies. Then, an optimization model have been developed minimizing end-point effects of the whole system to find the best configuration of treatment technologies. The result suggests utilizing the recycling technologies for paper, glass, plastic and metal and anaerobic digestion for biodegradable wastes. Alongside Life cycle assessment, Emergy method have been used as an environmental accounting method and a tool for quantifying the ecosystem services. In this method, all inputs and outputs of the system are converted to their emergy equivalents. The pollutions of the system are converted to the needed ecosystem services to dilute them to accepted environmental regulations and standards. The system’s costs, land use, virgin material consumptions and also human labor are converted to emergy equivalents using unit emergy values (UEV). Emergy assessment method creates upstream indicators related to natural resource consumption. Finally, an optimization model have been developed to find the best configuration of treatment technologies maximizing the net emergy subjected to economic constraints. In Emergy assessment method, ecosystem services may be traced. So this method can be a complement for Life cycle assessment method. In the life cycle assessment optimization problem, metal waste flow is diverted from recycling technology and is entered into inert landfill after applying the cost constraint. In Emergy assessment optimization problem the only difference with LCA solution is about biodegradable waste which is entered into composting technology on the absence of budget constraints. By applying the budget constraint, metal waste flow diverted from recycling technologies and entered into inert landfill. In emergy optimization problem, the composting is prefered due to high economic, land use, and human labor cost of anaerobic digestion. Finally the integrated method proposes the utilization of recycling for recyclable wastes and composting for biodegradable waste
  9. Keywords:
  10. Waste Management ; Municipal Solid Waste ; Life Cycle Assessment ; Ecosystem Services ; Optimization ; Energy Assessment

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