scholarly journals Holistic assessment of solid wastes and their environmental impacts in Osogbo city, Southwestern Nigeria with the application of GaBi6 modeling tool

Author(s):  
S.O Ojoawo ◽  
A.A Amoo ◽  
O.M Adisa

Environmental impacts and attendant nuisance of solid wastes escalate in the 21st Century. Effective management of the wastes in a holistic manner is a proven way out of the menace. This research focuses on accessing the life cycle of solid wastes in Osogbo. The main objective is to evaluate the physical and chemical constituents of the wastes and determine their best disposal method in the study area. In the study, wastes were collected over a period of 2 weeks, wastes composition was determined for the randomly selected residential buildings, and the per capital waste generation rate was evaluated for the area. Potable gas detectors were used to detect and measure the gases present at this dumpsite. The emission of gases and energy consumption was evaluated using the methodology of life cycle in calculating life cycle inventory of the waste strategies. The measured gases include; Sulphur (IV) oxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon (iv) oxide (CO2), ammonia (NH4). The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other Environmental Impacts (TRACI) of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Methodology of the Centre for Environmental Studies (CML) of the University of Leiden are the two approaches applied as provided for in the GaBi6 (Holistic Balancing) Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software database, to classify and characterize environmental impacts of municipal wastes in Osogbo. The Impact Indices measured from both scenarios were: Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Eutrophication Potential (EP) and Ozone Layer Depletion Potential (ODP). For the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA), two waste management scenarios were developed and compared using GaBi6 software. Scenario one involves collection, transportation and incineration, while Scenario 2 ends with landfilling. Findings showed that the overall mean percent (%) wastes composition for paper, biodegradable, plastic, glass, metal, wood and textile were respectively found to be 4.32, 67.53, 5.07, 4.90, 6.54, 8.74 and 2.90. The per capita waste generation in the study area was found to be 1.09 kg/capita/day. From the results of LCIA methods studied using the ODP index, Scenario one with the TRACI method gives the total values for GWP, AP, EP, ODP as 4.18, 1.08, 1.392E-4, 3.147E-8 respectively. With the CML method, the values are 4.18, 1.3E-3, 3.771E-4, 2.878E-8 respectively. The respective results from scenario two with the TRACI method and CML methods showed total values for GWP, AP, EP, ODP as 9.64, 0.112, 3.108E-3, 1.447E-11 and 9.64, 1.77E-3, 7.247E-3, 1.361E-11. It is concluded that of the two management scenarios considered, landfilling of wastes is more environmentally friendly as compared to incineration, and is therefore recommended for use in the study area.

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (March 2018) ◽  
Author(s):  
R.T Oluwanisola ◽  
S.O Ojoawo

The problems of solid waste in Ilorin East Local Government Area (LGA) of Kwara State are uncontrolled dumping of wastes in the environment, lack of standard landfill and poorly located dumpsites. In this paper, the life-cycle of solid wastes in Horin East Local Government Area of Kwara State was examined using GaBi, modeling tool and the implications of their environmental impacts were identified. Three major dumpsites viz: Apado, Agbeyangi, and Oke-Oyi were selected and the concentration levels of CH, CO, SO, and CO gases were measured using ToxiRae gas sampler. Two waste management scenarios were developed and compared using GaBi,software version. Scenario 1 involved collection, transportation and landfilling, while Scenario 2 involved collection, transportation, and incineration. The impact indices determined for both scenarios were Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Eutrophication Potential (EP) and Ozone layer Depletion Potential (ODP) using the Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other Environmental Impacts (TRACI) of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Methodology of the Centre for Environmental Studies (CML) of the University of Leiden in the GaBi, software version. The impact indices of landfilling scenario for GWP, AP, EP, and ODP were 2.63(kgCO, Equiv.), 1.50E-03 (kgSO,Equiv.), 3.22E-03(kg Phosphate Equiv.) and 9.98E-12(kg CFC 11-Equiv.), respectively. Those of the impacts of incineration scenario for GWP, AP, EP, and ODP were 3.32(kgCO, Equiv.), 9.20E-04(kgSO,Equiv.), 3.72E-04(kg Phosphate Equiv.) and 2.49E-08(kg CFC 11-Equiv.), respectively. Landfilling of wastes poses a lesser burden on the environment, using ODP index, as compared to incineration and therefore recommended for use in the study area.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 3820
Author(s):  
Noelia Llantoy ◽  
Gabriel Zsembinszki ◽  
Valeria Palomba ◽  
Andrea Frazzica ◽  
Mattia Dallapiccola ◽  
...  

With the aim of contributing to achieving the decarbonization of the energy sector, the environmental impact of an innovative system to produce heating and domestic hot water for heating demand-dominated climates is assessed is evaluated. The evaluation is conducted using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and the ReCiPe and IPCC GWP indicators for the manufacturing and operation stages, and comparing the system to a reference one. Results show that the innovative system has a lower overall impact than the reference one. Moreover, a parametric study to evaluate the impact of the refrigerant is carried out, showing that the impact of the overall systems is not affected if the amount of refrigerant or the impact of refrigerant is increased.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5322
Author(s):  
Gabriel Zsembinszki ◽  
Noelia Llantoy ◽  
Valeria Palomba ◽  
Andrea Frazzica ◽  
Mattia Dallapiccola ◽  
...  

The buildings sector is one of the least sustainable activities in the world, accounting for around 40% of the total global energy demand. With the aim to reduce the environmental impact of this sector, the use of renewable energy sources coupled with energy storage systems in buildings has been investigated in recent years. Innovative solutions for cooling, heating, and domestic hot water in buildings can contribute to the buildings’ decarbonization by achieving a reduction of building electrical consumption needed to keep comfortable conditions. However, the environmental impact of a new system is not only related to its electrical consumption from the grid, but also to the environmental load produced in the manufacturing and disposal stages of system components. This study investigates the environmental impact of an innovative system proposed for residential buildings in Mediterranean climate through a life cycle assessment. The results show that, due to the complexity of the system, the manufacturing and disposal stages have a high environmental impact, which is not compensated by the reduction of the impact during the operational stage. A parametric study was also performed to investigate the effect of the design of the storage system on the overall system impact.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2525
Author(s):  
Camila López-Eccher ◽  
Elizabeth Garrido-Ramírez ◽  
Iván Franchi-Arzola ◽  
Edmundo Muñoz

The aim of this study is to assess the environmental impacts of household life cycles in Santiago, Chile, by household income level. The assessment considered scenarios associated with environmental policies. The life cycle assessment was cradle-to-grave, and the functional unit considered all the materials and energy required to meet an inhabitant’s needs for one year (1 inh/year). Using SimaPro 9.1 software, the Recipe Midpoint (H) methodology was used. The impact categories selected were global warming, fine particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, freshwater ecotoxicity, mineral resource scarcity, and fossil resource scarcity. The inventory was carried out through the application of 300 household surveys and secondary information. The main environmental sources of households were determined to be food consumption, transport, and electricity. Food consumption is the main source, responsible for 33% of the environmental impacts on global warming, 69% on terrestrial acidification, and 29% on freshwater eutrophication. The second most crucial environmental hotspot is private transport, whose contribution to environmental impact increases as household income rises, while public transport impact increases in the opposite direction. In this sense, both positive and negative environmental effects can be generated by policies. Therefore, life-cycle environmental impacts, the synergy between policies, and households’ socio-economic characteristics must be considered in public policy planning and consumer decisions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 6504-6515

With the development of additive manufacturing technology, 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds have evolved. Bone tissue engineering is one of the techniques for repairing bone abnormalities caused by a variety of circumstances, such as injuries or the need to support damaged sections. Many bits of research have gone towards developing 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds all across the world. The assessment of the environmental impact, on the other hand, has received less attention. As a result, the focus of this study is on developing a life cycle assessment (LCA) model for 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds and evaluating potential environmental impacts. One of the methodologies to evaluating a complete environmental impact assessment is life cycle assessment (LCA). The cradle-to-grave method will be used in this study, and GaBi software was used to create the analysis for this study. Previous research on 3D bone tissue engineering fabrication employing poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) soaked in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), and diphenyl (2,4,6-trimethylbenzoyl) phosphine oxide (TPO) as a photoinitiator will be reviewed. Meanwhile, digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing is employed as the production technique. The GaBi program and the LCA model developed to highlight the potential environmental impact. This study shows how the input and output of LCA of 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds might contribute to environmental issues such as air, freshwater, saltwater, and industrial soil emissions. The emission contributing to potential environmental impacts comes from life cycle input, electricity and transportation consumption, manufacturing process, and material resources. The results from this research can be used as an indicator for the researcher to take the impact of the development of 3D bone tissue engineering on the environment seriously.


Author(s):  
Kaleb Pattawi ◽  
Prateek Munankarmi ◽  
Michael Blonsky ◽  
Jeff Maguire ◽  
Sivasathya Pradha Balamurugan ◽  
...  

Abstract Residential buildings, accounting for 37% of the total electricity consumption in the United States, are suitable for demand response (DR) programs to support effective and economical operation of the power system. A home energy management system (HEMS) enables residential buildings to participate in such programs, but it is also important for HEMS to account for occupant preferences to ensure occupant satisfaction. For example, people who prefer a higher thermal comfort level are likely to consume more energy. In this study, we used foresee™, a HEMS developed by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), to perform a sensitivity analysis of occupant preferences with the following objectives: minimize utility cost, minimize carbon footprint, and maximize thermal comfort. To incorporate the preferences into the HEMS, the SMARTER method was used to derive a set of weighting factors for each objective. We performed week-long building energy simulations using a model of a home in Fort Collins, Colorado, where there is mandatory time-of-use electricity rate structure. The foresee™ HEMS was used to control the home with six different sets of occupant preferences. The study shows that occupant preferences can have a significant impact on energy consumption and is important to consider when modeling residential buildings. Results show that the HEMS could achieve energy reduction ranging from 3% to 21%, cost savings ranging from 5% to 24%, and carbon emission reduction ranging from 3% to 21%, while also maintaining a low thermal discomfort level ranging from 0.78 K-hour to 6.47 K-hour in a one-week period during winter. These outcomes quantify the impact of varying occupant preferences and will be useful in controlling the electrical grid and developing HEMS solutions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuyuan Xue ◽  
Hongbo Liu ◽  
Qinxiao Zhang ◽  
Jingxin Wang ◽  
Jilin Fan ◽  
...  

The development of higher education has led to an increasing demand for campus buildings. To promote the sustainable development of campus buildings, this paper combines social willingness-to-pay (WTP) with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based on the characteristics of Chinese campus buildings to establish a life cycle assessment–life cycle cost (LCA–LCC) integrated model. Based on this model, this paper analyses the teaching building at a university in North China. The results show that the environmental impacts and economic costs are largest in the operation phase of the life cycle, mainly because of the use of electric energy. The environmental impacts and economic costs during the construction phase mainly come from the building material production process (BMPP); in this process, steel is the main source. Throughout the life cycle, abiotic depletion-fossil fuel potential (ADP fossil) and global warming potential (GWP) are the most prominent indexes. Further analysis shows that these two indexes should be the emphases of similar building assessments in the near future. Finally, this study offers suggestions for the proposed buildings and existing buildings based on the prominent problems found in the case study, with the aim to provide reference for the design, construction, and operation management of similar buildings.


Resources ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattias Gaglio ◽  
Elena Tamburini ◽  
Francesco Lucchesi ◽  
Vassilis Aschonitis ◽  
Anna Atti ◽  
...  

The need to reduce the environmental impacts of the food industry is increasing together with the dramatic increment of global food demand. Circulation strategies such as the exploitation of self-produced renewable energy sources can improve ecological performances of industrial processes. However, evidence is needed to demonstrate and characterize such environmental benefits. This study assessed the environmental performances of industrial processing of maize edible oil, whose energy provision is guaranteed by residues biomasses. A gate-to-gate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach was applied for a large-size factory of Northern Italy to describe: (i) the environmental impacts related to industrial processing and (ii) the contribution of residue-based bioenergy to their mitigation, through the comparison with a reference system based on conventional energy. The results showed that oil refinement is the most impacting phase for almost all the considered impact categories. The use of residue-based bioenergy was found to drastically reduce the emissions for all the impact categories. Moreover, Cumulative Energy Demand analysis revealed that the use of biomass residues increased energy efficiency through a reduction of the total energy demand of the industrial process. The study demonstrates that the exploitation of residue-based bioenergy can be a sustainable solution to improve environmental performances of the food industry, while supporting circular economy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (12) ◽  
pp. 2432-2450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Beylot ◽  
Sara Corrado ◽  
Serenella Sala

Abstract Purpose Trade is increasingly considered a significant contributor to environmental impacts. The assessment of the impacts of trade is usually performed via environmentally extended input–output analysis (EEIOA). However, process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to traded goods allows increasing the granularity of the analysis and may be essential to unveil specific impacts due to traded products. Methods This study assesses the environmental impacts of the European trade, considering two modelling approaches: respectively EEIOA, using EXIOBASE 3 as supporting database, and process-based LCA. The interpretation of the results is pivotal to improve the robustness of the assessment and the identification of hotspots. The hotspot identification focuses on temporal trends and on the contribution of products and substances to the overall impacts. The inventories of elementary flows associated with EU trade, for the period 2000–2010, have been characterized considering 14 impact categories according to the Environmental Footprint (EF2017) Life Cycle Impact Assessment method. Results and discussion The two modelling approaches converge in highlighting that in the period 2000–2010: (i) EU was a net importer of environmental impacts; (ii) impacts of EU trade and EU trade balance (impacts of imports minus impacts of exports) were increasing over time, regarding most impact categories under study; and (iii) similar manufactured products were the main contributors to the impacts of exports from EU, regarding most impact categories. However, some results are discrepant: (i) larger impacts are obtained from IO analysis than from process-based LCA, regarding most impact categories, (ii) a different set of most contributing products is identified by the two approaches in the case of imports, and (iii) large differences in the contributions of substances are observed regarding resource use, toxicity, and ecotoxicity indicators. Conclusions The interpretation step is crucial to unveil the main hotspots, encompassing a comparison of the differences between the two methodologies, the assumptions, the data coverage and sources, the completeness of inventory as basis for impact assessment. The main driver for the observed divergences is identified to be the differences in the impact intensities of goods, both induced by inherent properties of the IO and life cycle inventory databases and by some of this study’s modelling choices. The combination of IO analysis and process-based LCA in a hybrid framework, as performed in other studies but generally not at the macro-scale of the full trade of a country or region, appears a potential important perspective to refine such an assessment in the future.


Author(s):  
Radim J. Sram

Thirty years ago, Northern Bohemia in the Czech Republic was one of the most air polluted areas in Europe. After political changes, the Czech government put forward a research program to determine if air pollution is really affecting human health. This program, later called the “Teplice Program”, was initiated in collaboration with scientists from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). This cooperation made possible the use of methods on the contemporary level. The very high concentrations of sulphur dioxide (SO2), particulate matter of 10 micrometers or less (PM10), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) present in the air showed, for the first time, the impact of air pollutants on the health of the population in mining districts: adverse pregnancy outcomes, the impact of air pollution on sperm morphology, learning disabilities in children, and respiratory morbidity in preschool children. A surprising result came from the distribution of the sources of pollution: 70% of PM10 pollution came from local heating and not from power plants as expected. Thanks to this result, the Czech government supported changes in local heating from brown coal to natural gas. This change substantially decreased SO2 and PM10 pollution and affected mortality, especially cardiovascular mortality.


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