Green Supply Chain and the Energy Recovery Plant in Abruzzo

LCA of municipal wastewater treatment

Wastewater treatment plants play a significant role in minimizing environmental pollution by treating wastewater and reducing the release of contaminants into the environment. However, their operation can still have an environmental footprint. Therefore, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of wastewater treatment provides a comprehensive framework to quantify the environmental impact of plants across various categories. By conducting LCA assessments, the environmental impacts of different scenarios or treatment technologies can be compared, enabling decision-makers to identify the most environmentally friendly options. This information helps in optimizing the plant's design, operation, and resource allocation to minimize their environmental burden. The current research hypothesis was to conduct an LCA of a typical activated sludge plant in Greece, considering three different scenarios in order to provide an innovative take on wastewater treatment plant foam waste and utilize them for the production of biogas through anaerobic digestion. The assessment was carried out using OpenLCA software as well as EcoInvent v3.3. database. The study focused on the impact assessment of five categories (eutrophication potential, acidification potential, global warming potential, ozone depletion, and photochemical ozone creation). The results indicated that the baseline scenario had the highest impact on these categories, followed by Scenario I, while Scenario II had the least impact. Additionally, the cumulative energy demand assessment showed that the baseline scenario required significantly more energy compared to Scenarios I and II. However, Scenario II, which involved fine screens and utilization of biogas, exhibited the highest energy production, thereby reducing the overall energy demands for the system. Based on these findings, it is crucial for wastewater treatment facilities to actively pursue energy demand mitigation strategies by implementing energy-efficient technologies and utilizing biogas. These measures not only contribute to environmental protection but also promote a greener and more sustainable future for WWTP operations.

A multi-objective optimization strategy for energy plants in Italy

In recent years, Europe has promoted a series of waste regulations to achieve greater protection of the environment. This objective can be obtained by adopting an integrated management system for the reduction of waste production and developing systems for waste sorting, energy recovery and waste recycling. Such interventions that find their justification in an environmental perspective must be also sustainable from an economic perspective. An analysis of the Italian situation highlights a dependency on landfills; this phenomenon must be reduced to identify actions aimed at safeguarding and protecting the environment. The aim of this paper is to analyse the economic and environmental benefits from diverting waste from landfills towards energy recovery in twenty Italian regions.

Municipal waste management and energy recovery in an Italian region

Diverting waste from landfill is one of the basic priorities on improving the use of resources and reducing the environmental impacts of waste management. In order to achieve this goal it is necessary to limit the amount of materials sent to final disposal and promote energy recovery. In Italy the use of recycling is registering a growing trend but the recourse to landfill is still too high with respect to European Commission targets. The aim of the paper was to analyse the financial and economic benefits that energy recovery could produce by diverting waste from landfills in an Italian region, as landfilling cannot be a solution in the long term because of its finite capacity and for various other ecological reasons. A sensitivity analysis on the critical variables of this plan and a risk analysis are also provided.