Lifecycle Environmental Performance Assessment And Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Municipal Solid Waste Incineration

With the increase of municipal solid waste（MSW）and the shortage of landfill sites,incineration has become one of the most important methods to treat MSW.However,because of the high economic cost and serious health impacts caused by pollutants emissions,the development of incineration faces greater obstacles.Under such circumstance,this study established a life cycle environmental impact assessment model and a lifecycle cost assessment model for municipal solid waste incineration in Shanghai and Chinese provinces.Software Gabi 8.0 was used for model establishment,and the CML-2001 assessment method was selected to evaluate the environmental impact of incineration.The results showed that during the entire life cycle of incineration,the processes that have greater impact on the environment are the process of waste in the incinerator and flue gas purification.To reduce the emission of pollutants,technical parameters of these two processes should be focued on.At the same time,for different waste heat utilization ways,cogeneration had the highest environmental emission reduction benefits due to its high thermal efficiency while waste incineration power generation had the least benefit.Taking Global Warming Potential（GWP）as an example,the environmental impacts for waste incineration power generation,waste heat supply and cogeneration are 32.32 kg CO₂ eq./t、-24.18kg CO₂ eq./t and-211.47kg CO₂ eq./t.In addition,based on the life cycle model of unit municipal solid waste incineration,this study also calaulated the comprehensive cost-benefit analysis in different Chinese provinces by focusing on waste heat utilization process.The results showed that with the increase in the proportion of incineration,the costs of municipal solid waste treatment,GWP,EP and POCP in all Chinese provinces presented a significant downward tread,while the toxicity potentials（FAETP,HTP,MAETP nad TETP）showed an upward trend.At the same time,the more developed and densely populated provinces such as Guangdong,Jiangsu and Zhejiang has much higher incineration capacity and potential.For the comprehensive cost-benefit analysis results,Shanghai,Guangdong and other more developed provinces had higher toxicity cost-effectiveness,while Xinjiang,Inner Mongolia and other northern areas had lower cost-benefit analysis results of GWP and EP,indicating that incineration was more suitable for the economically developed provinces in China.