Life-Cycle Assessment of Waste Management Greenhouse Gas Emissions Using Municipal Waste Combustor Data
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 8
Abstract
This paper compares life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from two municipal solid waste (MSW) management options, municipal waste combustion, and landfilling, using a U.S. EPA life-cycle assessment (LCA) model, the MSW Decision Support Tool. Unlike previously reported LCAs, key combustion model inputs—total MSW carbon content and its biogenic/fossil split—are determined not from MSW composition studies, but from measurements taken at operating municipal waste combustors (MWCs). MWC measurement data show U.S. MSW carbon content averages of 30% with a biogenic/fossil split of 66%/34%. The LCA also considers a range of landfilling scenarios which account not only for alternative landfill gas (LFG) management techniques, but also for the variability of landfill methane generation and capture. The LCA found that for the range of inputs and scenarios considered, municipal waste combustion outperforms landfilling in terms of GHG emissions, regardless of the LFG management technique.
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Acknowledgments
Covanta Energy Corporation’s Robert Terramoccia, Gaston Haupert, and Stephen DeDuck, P.E., provided essential analysis used for this paper.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 8 • August 2010
Pages: 749 - 755
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 31, 2008
Accepted: Oct 29, 2009
Published online: Oct 31, 2009
Published in print: Aug 2010
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