PARENT SESSION

6E - Life cycle management
Poster Hall
8:30 AM - Monday, 28 April 2003
Chair: Saur, K.¹, ¹
Co-chair: Frankl, P.², ²

(MOP/211) Environmental impact assessment of a solid municipal waste landfill using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

Boghi, Silvia ¹, Bruzzi, Luigi ¹, Masoni, Paolo², Rinaldi, Caterina², ¹ University of Bologna, Ravenna, Ravenna, Italy² ENEA, Bologna, Bologna, Italy

ABSTRACT- The main environmental impacts associated to a solid municipal waste landfill (Sogliano, Italy), have been assessed with the LCA methodology, in order to identify: a) the bottleneck of the system, b) the more significant inputs and outputs for each included phase (realization, activity and final cover), c) the possibilities of integration with the EMS and the monitoring system. The chosen functional unit is one ton of waste and the time horizon includes the operating period (14 years) plus 100 years after the landfill closure. The inventory data for the implementation of the SimaPro 5.0 model have been supplied from Sogliano Ambiente S.p.A., integrated, where necessary, with data from literature and other databases. To estimate the amounts of biogas and leachate produced, the LandGEM (Landfill Gas Emission Model) and the HELP (Hydrologic Evaluation of Landfill Performance model) have been used; both softwares are developed by U.S. EPA. For the impact assessment phase, EcoIndicator ′99 methodology has been used. The results show that the most contributing phase to the impact categories is the operating phase. The two most important flows affecting Human health and Ecosystem quality are: 1) the methane contained in the biogas (in particular the fraction that is not collected and burnt either in the flares or in the co-generation plant); 2) the biogas itself that, after the first 30 years of post-operating phase, isn′t anymore burnt. A very positive effect is due to the electric power produced from the recovered biogas in the co-generation system, that is considered as avoided production of the Italian electricity mix (important avoided impact on the Resources category).

Key words: LCA, Landfill, EcoIndicator '99, Environmental impacts