scholarly journals Environmental Impact Assessment of Food Waste Management Using Two Composting Techniques

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1595 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aisha Al-Rumaihi ◽  
Gordon McKay ◽  
Hamish R. Mackey ◽  
Tareq Al-Ansari

Food waste is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and therefore global warming. As such, the management of food waste can play a fundamental role in the reduction of preventable emissions associated with food waste. In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to evaluate and compare the environmental impact associated with two composting techniques for treating food waste using SimaPro software; windrow composting and the hybrid anaerobic digestion (AD) method. The study, based on a 1 tonne of food waste as a functional unit for a case study in the State of Qatar, concludes that anaerobic digestion combined composting presents a smaller environmental burden than windrow composting. The majority of the emissions generated are due to the use of fossil fuels during transportation, which correspond to approximately 60% of the total impact, followed by the impact of composting with 40% of the impact especially in terms of global warming potential. Environmental assessment impacts were the highest in windrow composting for the acidification impact category (9.39 × 10 − 1 kg SO2 eq). While for AD combined composting the impact was highest for the human toxicity impact category (3.47 × 10 kg 1,4 − DB eq).

2021 ◽  
Vol 894 (1) ◽  
pp. 012004
Author(s):  
S Hartini ◽  
B S Ramadan ◽  
R Purwaningsih ◽  
S Sumiyati ◽  
M A A Kesuma

Abstract Tofu contains various substances that are very good when consumed to improve people’s nutrition. In addition, tofu also has good taste. The problem is that the tofu production process produces products and non-product outputs in the form of waste that is very dangerous if directly disposed of in the environment. The BOD5 content of tofu small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Sugihmanik Village ranged from 3,667-4,933 mg/L and COD 7,668-9,736 mg/L. At the same time, the TSS values ranged from 701-1,189 mg/L. The BOD5 value in the river water content is 367 mg/L. It greatly exceeds the set Threshold Value. This study aims to measure the environmental impact using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA can identify the impact of each activity based on the impact category to identify the processes that contribute significantly to damaging the environment. This study found that the cooking and frying process had the highest impact, where the climate change category was the largest. Wastewater treatment plants, biogas from the biodigester as a substitute for electricity for water pumps, rice husks, and corn cobs are expected to reduce environmental impacts. The first section in your paper


Author(s):  
Ayşe Sirel ◽  
Gökçen Firdevs Yücel

Diminishing natural resources have increased the prominence and implementation of approaches to sustainable planning, design, and application. Green schools minimize environmental impact by promoting environmentally friendly attitudes, reducing the need for infrastructure facilities, and using recycling as a strategy both during and after their construction. As with other green buildings, green schools reduce dependency on fossil fuels and thus limit the emission of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Concerning global warming, green schools have the capacity to “turn back time,” creating learning circles that elicit solutions from their student bodies. In this chapter, the authors explore the economic, ecological, and social dimensions of green schools by means of a case study of an education campus in Adana, Turkey. The authors aim to elucidate how green schools may be effective in the conservation of future resources in architectural sustainability.


2019 ◽  
pp. 756-789
Author(s):  
Ayşe Sirel ◽  
Gökçen Firdevs Yücel

Diminishing natural resources have increased the prominence and implementation of approaches to sustainable planning, design, and application. Green schools minimize environmental impact by promoting environmentally friendly attitudes, reducing the need for infrastructure facilities, and using recycling as a strategy both during and after their construction. As with other green buildings, green schools reduce dependency on fossil fuels and thus limit the emission of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Concerning global warming, green schools have the capacity to “turn back time,” creating learning circles that elicit solutions from their student bodies. In this chapter, the authors explore the economic, ecological, and social dimensions of green schools by means of a case study of an education campus in Adana, Turkey. The authors aim to elucidate how green schools may be effective in the conservation of future resources in architectural sustainability.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 2291
Author(s):  
Laura Brenes-Peralta ◽  
María F. Jiménez-Morales ◽  
Rooel Campos-Rodríguez ◽  
Fabio De Menna ◽  
Matteo Vittuari

Economies have begun to shift from linear to circular, adopting, among others, waste-to-energy approaches. Waste management is known to be a paramount challenge, and food waste (FW) in particular, has gained the interest of several actors due to its potential impacts and energy recovery opportunities. However, the selection of alternative valorization scenarios can pose several queries in certain contexts. This paper evaluates four FW valorization scenarios based on anaerobic digestion and composting, in comparison to landfilling, by applying a consistent decision-making framework through a combination of linear programming, Life Cycle Thinking (LCT), and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The evaluation was built upon a case study of five universities in Costa Rica and portrayed the trade-offs between environmental impacts and cost categories from the scenarios and their side flows. Results indicate that the landfill scenario entails higher Global Warming Potential and Fresh Water Eutrophication impacts than the valorization scenarios; however, other impact categories and costs are affected. Centralized recovery facilities can increase the Global Warming Potential and the Land Use compared to semi-centralized ones. Experts provided insights, regarding the ease of adoption of composting, in contrast to the potential of energy sources substitution and economic savings from anaerobic digestion.


2015 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoon Lin Chiew ◽  
Johanna Spångberg ◽  
Andras Baky ◽  
Per-Anders Hansson ◽  
Håkan Jönsson

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (SE) ◽  
pp. 531-538
Author(s):  
Adel Ataei Karizi ◽  
Mahjoobeh Noohi Bezenjani

Today, the environment, optimizing energy consumption and sustainable development have become the most important issues at the international level. Increasing population growth has disastrous effects on Earth's natural habitats and issues such as general global warming, increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that cause global warming, air, water and soil pollution all lead to irresponsible consumption of energy. This paper tries to evaluate sustainable patterns in warm and dry areas that with the climate analysis and contemporary comparison of design in hot and dry climate while clarifying various aspects, explain the impact of environmental factors in the formation of sustainable architecture and the use of applied patterns to design a sustainable architecture. It have been used analytical method, as well as library and documentary research in this study.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Ramírez-Villegas ◽  
Ola Eriksson ◽  
Thomas Olofsson

The aim of this study is to assess how the use of fossil and nuclear power in different renovation scenarios affects the environmental impacts of a multi-family dwelling in Sweden, and how changes in the electricity production with different energy carriers affect the environmental impact. In line with the Paris Agreement, the European Union has set an agenda to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by means of energy efficiency in buildings. It is estimated that by the year 2050, 80% of Europe’s population will be living in buildings that already exist. This means it is important for the European Union to renovate buildings to improve energy efficiency. In this study, eight renovation scenarios, using six different Northern European electricity mixes, were analyzed using the standard of the European Committee for Standardization for life cycle assessment of buildings. This study covers all life cycle steps from cradle to grave. The renovation scenarios include combinations of photovoltaics, geothermal heat pumps, heat recovery ventilation, and improvement of the building envelope. The results show that while in some electricity mixes a reduction in the global warming potential can be achieved, it can be at the expense of an increase in radioactive waste production, and, in mixes with a high share of fossil fuels, the global warming potential of the scenarios increases with time, compared with that of the original building. It also shows that in most electricity mixes, scenarios that reduce the active heat demand of the building end up in reducing both the global warming potential and radioactive waste, making them less sensitive to changes in the energy system.


2019 ◽  
Vol 118 ◽  
pp. 04025
Author(s):  
Tao Wang ◽  
Fei Wang ◽  
Yangqing Hu

Anaerobic digestion technology is a widely used technology for food waste treatment. It can produce clean fuel gas and realize harmless treatment of waste. Different ways of utilizing the digestion products vary depending on the market demand and production technology. In this paper, life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to analyse the environmental impacts of different processes in food waste anaerobic digestion treatment and compare different utilization strategies of digestion products especially the digestate. The results of this study indicated that the incineration of digestate had advantages in most environmental impacts except global warming potential (GWP), compared with composting as fertilizers. Besides that, incineration had the lower energy efficiency due to drying heat demand. The high energy conversion efficiency of internal combustion engine contributed much to reducing environmental impacts. It’s worth mentioning that the sufficient combustion performance of micro-turbine resulted in smaller global warming potential (GWP) and eutrophication potential (EP).


Processes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 1018
Author(s):  
Vijayalakshmi Arelli ◽  
Sudharshan Juntupally ◽  
Sameena Begum ◽  
Gangagni Rao Anupoju

The aim of this study was to treat food waste containing 25% total solids (TS) through dry anaerobic digestion (dry AD) process at various pressures (0.5 to 2.5 kg/cm2) and different time duration (20 to 100 min) to understand the impact of pretreatment in enhancing the methane generation potential along with insights on scale up. The findings revealed that vs. reduction and methane yield of 60% and 0.25 L CH4/(g VSadded) can be achieved with pretreated food waste at two kilograms per square centimeter, while pretreatment of food waste at 2 kg/cm2 for 100 min enhanced the vs. reduction from 60% to 85% and methane yield from 0.25 to 0.368 L CH4/(g VSadded). However, the net energy indicated that 40 min of pre -treatment at two kilograms per square centimeter can be a suitable option as methane yield and vs. reduction of 0.272 L CH4/(g VSadded) and 70%, respectively was achieved. The vs. reduction and the methane yield of 45% and 0.14 L CH4/(g VSadded), respectively was obtained from untreated food waste which illustrated that pretreatment had significantly impacted on the enhancement of methane generation and organic matter removal which can make the dry AD process more attractive and feasible at commercial scale.


Author(s):  
A. L. Laganelli ◽  
C. Rodgers ◽  
W. E. Lear ◽  
P. L. Meitner

The impact on global warming of transportation and the infrastructure that supports it has been investigated over several decades. Anthropogenic heat and the generation of greenhouse gases from burning of fossil fuels and are major contributors to the warming process. An approach to mitigate these effects is discussed that considers semi-closed cycle gas turbine engines as a practical approach to slowing the release of greenhouse gases. Semi-closed cycle gas turbine engines have an inherent capability to reduce all regulated emissions while maintaining high efficiency, which in turn reduces CO2 emissions. With emerging technology development that includes higher component efficiencies, high temperature material development, improved control devices, and advanced combustor designs, aided by computational fluid dynamics, semi-closed cycle engines appear to have the potential to mitigate global warming with little economic or infrastructural impact. A specific semi-closed engine type is described, the high pressure recuperated turbine engine (HPRTE), along with the inherent mechanisms for control of NOx, CO, unburned hydrocarbons, and particulates. Results from a breadboard demonstration of the HPRTE are discussed, as well as emerging technologies which benefit this type of engine.


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