Technical Development of Waste Sector in Sweden: Survey

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MASTER’S THESIS IN ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGIES RESEARCH Carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and methane form the primary components of syngas. Figure 10: Flow diagram of P-G of MSW (Alternative Resources Inc., 2007) Pyrolysis-Gasification is not a new technology, however, the process has been used for MSW very recently (Saft, 2007), (McKay, 2004), (Malkow, 2004). Coal gasification was used since the early 1800s to produce town gas and the first four-stroke engine was run on producer gas in 1876 (wheeler & Rome, 2002). Gasification technology is by no means a new technology, in 1850s, most of the city of London was illuminated by ‘‘town gas’’ produced from the gasification of coal (Feo et al., 2003). Many studies have been conducted to analyze the environmental performance and some studies on the processes have been done by Malkow (2004), Feo et al. (2003), Khoo (2009), Horst et al., (2008), Saft (2007), Choi et al. (2006), Morris and Waldheim (1998), Cherubini et al., (2008). Potential environmental impact from the Pyrolysis-Gasification of MSW has been analyzed by the LCA model, while a comparative study of Pyrolysis-Gasification process with incineration have also been done to analyze overall performance of the emerging technology. 4.7 Life Cycle Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste Over the time in waste management sector, various models (Morrissey & Browne, 2004) have been developed to be considered as prime decision support tools. In the end of the 1960’s waste management model had started its journey with computerized waste planning model (Björklund, KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HÖGSKOLAN 26 | Page
MASTER’S THESIS IN ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGIES RESEARCH 2000) with the other cost analysis, multi-criteria optimization (MCO) or multiple criteria analysis (MCA) tools. There are different environmental system analysis tools (Finnveden and Moberg, 2004) that are available currently. However, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (also known as ‘cradle-to-grave’ analysis) is becoming as a prime tool to assess the potential environmental impact in waste management systems. In Life Cycle Analysis, environmental assessment of a certain product or service has been done from the raw material extraction/manufacture phase (cradle) to the end of life/disposal phase (grave). A waste management system can be considered as a service, which plays different functions in the society. However, it is complex to define ‘cradle’ and ‘grave’ in LCA for waste management system because, waste consists of different kind of products so the ‘cradle’ of the waste will be the same as the product. However, t in LCA of waste management, upstream processes are excluded from the analysis (Björklun, A. 2000) and wastes are treated as ‘zero burden’ inputs and ‘cradle’ phase is started from the collection of waste. Life cycle stages for waste are shown in the below Figure 11 based on White (1999) model. Figure 11: Up-stream life cycle stages cut-off in LCA of waste management based on White (1999) Many research work has already been done to examine the scope, limitations and potentiality of LCA model as waste management decision support tool and among them few have beendone by Barton and Patel (1996), Björklund A. (2000), Ekvall and Finnveden (2000), Matsuto (2002), Rebitzer et al., (2004), Pennington et al., (2004), Björklund and Finnveden (2007), Bilitewski and Winkler (2007), Ekvall et al., (2007), Gheewala and Liamsangun (2008), Pennington and Koneczny (2007), Cherubini et al. (2008), Cherubini et al. (2008 1 ), Manfredi and Christensen (2009). Therefore, LCA is quite a strong analytical tool to assess emerging technology for future perspective of waste management. KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HÖGSKOLAN 27 | Page
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