Municipal Solid Waste Management Under The Carbon Emission Constraints

The management of municipal solid waste system has become a serious problem faced by local governments owing to the negative impacts of municipal solid waste on the surrounding environment and human health.At present,most municipal solid waste is disposed of in sanitary landfill.Other options for solid waste treatment include waste reduction,material recycling,and energy recovery.A comprehensive municipal solid waste management system must allocate the disposal capacity of various waste treatment methods in an optimal manner while considering a series of system constraints.Taking Qingdao City as an example,this thesis proposes an integrated framework for municipal solid waste management system planning,which includes two parts: life cycle carbon accounting and carbon emission pinch analysis.The solid waste treatment method can affect the greenhouse gas emissions of the whole system through its carbon emission factor.In this thesis,the process of carbon emission factor calculation is based on the life cycle analysis method,that is,the greenhouse gas emissions from waste generation to final disposal are all taken into account.According to the field investigation,seven waste treatment methods are considered,and the accounting process of carbon emission factors is divided into five parts: waste collection and transportation,waste classification and recycling,landfill,waste incineration and energy use.Then,carbon emission factors of each waste treatment method were obtained and applied to the planning of municipal solid waste management in combination with the carbon emission pinch analysis.Under the constraint of carbon emission target,this thesis introduces the carbon emission pinch analysis as an effective tool to optimize the municipal solid waste management system.Based on the different combinations of seven waste disposal technologies,three scenarios are designed to conduct pinch analysis under the different carbon emission constraints of year 2020 and 2035,respectively.The results show that under the increasingly stringent greenhouse gas emission targets and the growing amount of solid waste,it is necessary to replace high carbon emission method with low carbon emission treatment method.The integrated framework based on life cycle carbon accounting and carbon emission pinch analysis proposed in this study can simultaneously achieve the dual objectives of anticipated greenhouse gas reduction and management optimization,so as to provide a decision-making basis for the local government.