Municipal Solid Waste Incineration With Energy Recovery

Incineration has been used widely for waste disposal, including household, hazardous, and medical wasteâ€"but there is increasing public concern over the benefits of combusting the waste versus the health risk from pollutants emitted during combustion. Waste Incineration and Public Health informs the emerging debate with the most up-to-date information available on incineration, pollution, and human healthâ€"along with expert conclusions and recommendations for further research and improvement of such areas as risk communication. The committee provides details on: Processes involved in incineration and how contaminants are released. Environmental dynamics of contaminants and routes of human exposure. Tools and approaches for assessing possible human health effects. Scientific concerns pertinent to future regulatory actions. The book also examines some of the social, psychological, and economic factors that affect the communities where incineration takes place and addresses the problem of uncertainty and variation in predicting the health effects of incineration processes.

This groundbreaking text provides background theory on the concept of sustainable development (environmental, social and economic aspects) and presents a series of practical case studies on such topics as waste water management, air quality, solid waste management and renewable energy.

This book presents an overview of municipal solid waste recycling, and how it can be used to generate clean power, transport fuels that can substitute fossil fuels, and value-based chemicals with minimal environmental impact. It also explains how hazardous wastes and sewage sludge can be treated and disposed of without affecting human and environmental health. A full discussion of established thermal conversion technologies that generate heat, electricity, liquid fuels and useful chemicals from solid waste and supporting case studies describing global waste-to-energy plants in operation make this work highly suited to an introductory course on waste thermal conversion processes.

Ever increasing amounts of solid waste and dwindling space for disposal is a problem reaching crisis level in many of the world's largest urban areas. Incineration as an alternative to landfill has come under scrutiny, though the capital and operating costs generally exceed those associated with landfill. This report provides background information for the "Decision-maker' guide to municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration". Key criteria for a solid waste incineration scheme are identified, and the report gives decision makers information on how to investigate and assess the degree to which they are fulfilled.

Environmental policy aims at the transition to sustainable production and consumption. This is taking place in different ways and at different levels. In cases where businesses are continuously active to improve the environmental performance of their products and activities, the availability of knowledge on environmental impacts is indispensable. The integrated assessment of all environmental impacts from cradle to grave is the basis for many decisions relating to achieving improved products and services. The assessment tool most widely used for this is the environmental Life Cycle Assessment, or LCA. Before you is the new Handbook of LCA replacing the previous edition of 1992. New developments in LCA methodology from all over the world have been discussed and, where possible, included in this new Handbook. Integration of all developments into a new, consistent method has been the main aim for the new Handbook. The thinking on environment and sustainability is, however, quickly evolving so that it is already clear now that this new LCA Handbook does not embrace the very latest developments. Therefore, further revisions will have to take place in the future. A major advantage of this Handbook is that it now also advises which procedures should be followed to achieve adequate, relevant and accepted results. Furthermore, the distinction between detailed and simplified LCA makes this Handbook more broadly applicable, while guidance is provided as to which additional information can be relevant for specialised applications.