Search results for " Solid Waste"

Direct Measurement of Methane Emission Rates: Multiyear Application to a Municipal Landfill in Southern Italy

2012

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) landfills have been identified as one of the most important sources of methane (CH4) emission. MSW contains a certain amount of biodegradable organic matter which undergoes anaerobic degradation resulting in the production of the landfill gas (LFG), which main component is tipically represented by CH4. In order to minimise its negative effects on the envi-ronment, LFG recovery is a suitable tool to control CH4 emissions from a landfill site and the measurement of CH4 emissions represents a good way to evaluate the effectiveness of LFG recover-ing system in reducing biogas emission to the atmosphere. However, up to now few measurements of landfill CH4 emissions ha…

Estimation of methane emission by a municipal landfill: the case of Palermo

2010

CH4 diffuse emissions from municipal solid waste landfills represent one of the most important anthropogenic source of greenhouse-gas. CH4 is produced by anaerobic biodegradation of organic matter in land-filled MSW and it constitutes the major component of landfill gas. Gas recovery is a suitable tool to effectively control CH4 emissions from landfill sites and the quantification of CH4 emissions represents a good tool to evaluate the effectiveness of biogas recovering system in reducing biogas emission. In particular, LFG emissions can be indirectly evaluated from mass balance equations between formation, recovery and oxidation of biogas in the landfill, as well as on a direct approach ba…

PLASTICS RECOVERY FROM MUNICIPAL WASTE: MAINSTREAMS AND BY-PRODUCTS IN A CASE STUDY IN NORTHERN ITALY.

2014

In the case study dealt with here, the factory treatments of dry Municipal Solid Waste are aimed primarily at materials recovery; restraining energy recovery to the hardly recyclable by-products. The main input consists of the so-called multipak from MSW source-sorted collection; plus packaging waste, paper and cardboard and other similar waste from curb-side collection. The principal fractions produced by the selection plant, own and operated by the Public Company in charge of MSW management, in the Year 2012 were 27 064 tonnes of plastics, 5 066 of paper, 3 014 of tin coated steel and 4 886 tonnes of extraneous fraction to dispose of. A minor – though valuable – product was aluminium. The…

The choice of a solid waste management system using the Electre II decision-aid method

1995

A multicriteria decision-aid method, Electre II, was applied to the real choice process of a solid waste management system in the Uusimaa region, Finland. The criteria used were chosen by a supervision group. The weights of the criteria were defined by the managers of environmental and technical affairs of each municipality in Uusimaa, Finland. The use of the Electre II method leads us to recommend centralized incineration as the best municipal solid waste management system for the planning region. However, the second best alternative, intermediate RDF combustion with intermediate landfilling was finally chosen by the municipalities.

Evaluating and prioritizing municipal solid waste management-related factors in Romania using fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS

2020

Integrated Methods for Establishing the Sustainability of Urban Policies: Applying Ecological Footprint to the Municipal Solid Waste Management

2018

The Ecological Footprint (EF) method is applied here to assess alternative policies regarding the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management. This approach arises from two considerations. First, the MSW management certainly requires a great attention by politicians and technicians, due to its importance for effectively administrating and environmentally controlling urban contexts. On the other hand, the EF method, thanks to its holistic structure of analysis, supposedly provides a synthetic and effective measure of the sustainability of waste management systems, so allowing public administrations to prioritizing policies aimed at implementing environmental actions. Here the EF method is used fo…

Trace element behavior in the fluidized bed gasification of solid recovered fuels

2013

Gasification of biomass and recycled fuels is of particular interest for the efficient production of power and heat. Trace elements present as impurities in the product gas should be removed very efficiently. The objective of this work has been to develop and test thermodynamic models for the reactions of trace elements with chlorine and sulfur in the gasification processes of recycled fuels. In particular, the chemical reactions of trace elements with main thermochemical conversion products, main ash components, and bed and sorbent material are implemented into the model. The possibilities of gas cleaning devices in condensing and removing the trace element compounds are studied by establi…

Improved route planning and scheduling of waste collection and transport

2006

The collection of waste is a highly visible and important municipal service that involves large expenditures. Waste collection problems are, however, one of the most difficult operational problems to solve. This paper describes the optimization of vehicle routes and schedules for collecting municipal solid waste in Eastern Finland. The solutions are generated by a recently developed guided variable neighborhood thresholding metaheuristic that is adapted to solve real-life waste collection problems. Several implementation approaches to speed up the method and cut down the memory usage are discussed. A case study on the waste collection in two regions of Eastern Finland demonstrates that sign…

A multi-objective approach to solid waste management

2010

The issue addressed in this paper consists in the localization and dimensioning of transfer stations, which constitute a necessary intermediate level in the logistic chain of the solid waste stream, from municipalities to the incinerator. Contextually, the determination of the number and type of vehicles involved is carried out in an integrated optimization approach. The model considers both initial investment and operative costs related to transportation and transfer stations. Two conflicting objectives are evaluated, the minimization of total cost and the minimization of environmental impact, measured by pollution. The design of the integrated waste management system is hence approached i…

Landfill Culture: Some Implications to Degrowth

2016

To some extent, waste is just one more sign of the unsustainability of growth. Waste from industrial and socio-economic metabolism must be understood as any unusable material left over after a job, function or operation has been completed, which however, retains the ability to disrupt natural systems and interfere with them as one of its inherent properties. As part of such waste, Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) represents the unusable (or underused) and rejected fraction of the material resources mobilized by the sophisticated urban and/or industrial ecosystem. Although the volume of MSW is relatively small compared to other waste types, it is increasingly important as a result of its steady r…