An Environmental Assessment for Municipal Organic Waste and Sludge Treated by Hydrothermal Carbonization
Climate change is the world’s greatest challenge today, reason why it is urgent to optimize industrial processes and find new renewable energy sources. One of the Waste-to-Energy (WTE) technologies with greater projections due to its operative advantages is hydrothermal carbonization (HTC), which allows converting biomass with high humidity at low temperatures. However, for its large-scale implementation there are challenges related to the variability of the composition of the residual biomass and the seasonal and geographical availability. For this reason, this research performed an evaluation of the environmental impacts caused by three biomasses blends that consider different organic fractions of municipal solid waste (food and pruning) and sludge, using as a tool for evaluation the Life cycle analysis (LCA). Results show that, blend 1 has a lower environmental impact for the case of production in the experimental laboratory level and generates higher environmental benefits on an industrial level production, in comparison with blends 2 and 3. This is mainly due to its greater calorific value and mass yield, which allows obtaining more hydrochar compared with the other blends, increasing the energy efficiency of the process. Finally, between 87.94% and 98.00% of energy reduction is required to obtain neutral impacts regarding the energy requirements in the experimental laboratory level scenario
Year of publication: |
[2022]
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Authors: | Espinoza Pérez, Lorena ; Espinoza Pérez, Andrea Teresa ; Pino-Cortés, Ernesto ; Vallejo, Fidel ; Díaz-Robles, Luis A. |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Treibhausgas-Emissionen | Greenhouse gas emissions | Umweltbewertung | Environmental valuation | Umweltpolitik | Environmental policy | Umweltbelastung | Pollution | EU-Staaten | EU countries |
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