Environmental impact estimation of municipal solidwaste treatment based on their composition and properties

• Main Authors: Il'inykh Galina Viktorovna, Korotaev Vladimir Nikolayevich, Vaysman Yakov Iosifovich
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Moscow State University of Civil Engineering (MGSU) 2014-02-01
• Series: Vestnik MGSU
• Subjects: municipal solid waste; MSW; waste composition; waste composition analysis; environmental impact; prevented environmental damage
• Online Access: http://vestnikmgsu.ru/files/archive/issues/2014/2/ru/16.pdf

Municipal solid waste (MSW) is a significant environmental and sanitarian problem for urban areas. Different, often alternative, measures are considered in order to reduce the environmental impact of MSW management system, so adequate technique of comparative assessment of their environmental efficiency is needed. The problem is that waste composition, dangerous and organic matter content are often ignored when environmental impacts of MSW management system are calculated. Therefore, an algorithm of environmental impact estimation of municipal solid waste treatment based on their composition and properties is a question of considerable importance.The main difficulty in performing environmental impact calculation in compliance with MSW composition is the evaluation of the emissions per waste unit. Waste component content and biodegradable carbon content in every component are taken into account as basic waste features for emission estimation. Methane generation potential is calculated as a function of biodegradable carbon content.Environmental impacts of waste treatment on manual sorting plant in Yekaterinburg are given as an example. Waste composition analysis was carried out there in 2012. Material flow analysis allowed clarifying mass balance of the process. About 10 % of income waste mass are going out of the waste management system as a recyclables and determine the decreasing of environmental impacts. 1.24 % of biodegradable carbon don’t reach landfills, so it means that production of about ten cubic meters of biogas per ton of income MSW are prevented. When converting this data in money, it results in 47.1 rubles per ton of MSW or about 4.7 million rubles annually.