Waste-to-Energy

Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for Sustainability Assessment and Ranking

Jingzheng Ren

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780128163948
• eBook ISBN:
  9780128166130
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Energy

Waste-to-Energy: Multi-criteria Decision Analysis for Sustainability Assessment and Ranking offers a comprehensive view of the technologies and processes for energy generation as a path for waste treatment, presenting all the necessary information and tools for selecting the most sustainable waste-to-energy solution under varying conditions. The book combines methods such as lifecycle assessment, sustainability assessment, multi-criteria decision-making, and multi-objective optimization modes. In addition, it provides an overview of waste-to-energy feedstocks, technologies and implementation, then goes on to investigate the critical factors and key enablers that influence the sustainable development of the waste-to-energy industry. The book proposes several decision-making methods for the ranking and selection of waste-to-energy scenarios under different levels of certainty and information availability, including multi-criteria, multi-actor and multi-attribute methods. Finally, the book employs lifecycle tools that allow the assessment of economic, environmental and social sustainability of waste-to-energy systems. - Explores existing and state-of-the-art waste to energy technologies and systems, as well as their feedstock requirements - Presents a wide perspective of sustainability issues of waste-to-energy technologies, also discussing critical influential factors or key enablers for promoting the sustainable development of waste-to-energy solutions - Provides multi-dimensional decision-making techniques for choosing the most suitable and sustainable waste-to-energy technologies for different scenarios

Chapter 1

An overview of waste-to-energy: feedstocks, technologies and implementations

Lu Sun^1,2, Wenjing Liu³, Minoru Fujii¹, Zhaoling Li¹, Jingzheng Ren⁴ and Yi Dou^1,5, ¹Center for Social and Environmental Systems Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan, ²Department of Environment Systems, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Chiba, Japan, ³School of Environment and Natural Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing, P.R. China, ⁴Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, P.R. China, ⁵The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract

Waste-to-energy (WtE) is a key issue of a waste management system. From the perspective of the energy system, WtE will contribute to the development of a low-carbon society. However, due to the lack of reviews of the historical and evolutionary aspects, studies related to WtE have not been comprehensively summarized from either a quantitative or qualitative perspective. This study applied bibliometric analysis to review the research features and trends of WtE study. Results showed that seven productive countries, including the United States and China, have made great contributions to the WtE studies. In terms of research methods, life cycle assessment is the most popular method. The main research fields focus on greenhouse gas emissions, environmental impact, and energy technology innovations. The research topics showed that improve energy recovery efficiency and climate change impacts have received increasing attention in WtE research. This chapter provides a comprehensive review of WtE research and quantifies the research networks and key information.

Keywords

Network analysis; waste-to-energy; research trend; BibExcel

1.1 Introduction

Waste management is an essential aspect in city development, and has become a hot issue in developing countries. The most common methods used for waste treatment are landfilling, composting, recycling, mechanical–biological treatment, and waste-to-energy (WtE) (Psomopoulos et al., 2009). Energy recovery from waste is an essential part of waste management (Astrup et al., 2015; Yu and Chau, 2009), and numerous researchers have studied WtE technologies, including system design and evaluation (Chen et al., 2012; Grosso et al., 2010). During the past decades, the WtE technology has undergone rapid development, and there are a lot of studies that have focused on nonthermal technologies, such as anaerobic digestion and fermentation, and thermal treatment methods, such as gasification and waste incineration. The conditions in developing and developed countries are different due to their different waste management conditions and policies. In the developed countries, such as Europe and Japan, the promotion of waste recycling is the first priority, and WtE projects in these countries are decreasing year by year. However, in developing countries, such as China, the number of WtE plants are increasingly significantly. WtE technologies can improve waste management in the fast-growing cities of developing and emerging countries (Zhang et al., 2007). Considering the recent awareness of global climate change, many governments have enacted policies regarding the release of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the environment. Also, many policies that promote investment in renewable energy technologies (Demirbaş, 2001), including WtE technology, have been put into place (Cheng and Hu, 2010).

WtE research covers a varied scope of disposal strategies for treatment residues, emissions reduction, technology application (Chen and Christensen, 2010; Stehlík, 2009), etc. However, since the lack of a WtE review of the historical and evolutionary aspects, studies related to WtE have not been comprehensively reviewed from either a quantitative or qualitative perspective. Although some reviews have summarized the widely used technologies and evaluation methods, very few studies have summarized the existing studies at a global level. A comprehensive integrative review provides insights into what contents have been covered and the new trends of this research field. Moreover, since the existing studies focus on the typical technology assessment or case study analysis, there are very few studies reviewing WtE from the perspectives of historical research features and trends.

Under such circumstances, this study aims to gain insights into the overall WtE research field, and summarize the major findings, contributions, and further directions of WtE research based on bibliometric analysis, including (1) the publication characteristics, such as journal, subject category, citation, and reference; (2) the cooperation and contribution of different countries/territories and authors; (3) keyword analysis to identify the research aspects and the development trends of WtE research; and finally (4) based on the above results, revealing the research fronts and hot topics in the future. The whole chapter is organized as follows. After this introduction section, the methodology and data sources are described in Section 1.2. Section 1.3 presents the main results and discusses research results. Finally, Section 1.4 draws research conclusions.

1.2 Methodology and date sources

1.2.1 Bibliometric analysis and visualization tools

Bibliometric analysis is a method to quantitatively assess the characteristics of academic literature by statistical methods, such as evaluation of the patterns of authors, journals, countries, and institutes in a specific fields (Chen et al., 2016). Besides, it also can examine the knowledge structure and development of research fields based on the analysis of related public...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• List of contributors
• Chapter 1. An overview of waste-to-energy: feedstocks, technologies and implementations
• Chapter 2. Waste to energy in a circular economy approach for better sustainability: a comprehensive review and SWOT analysis
• Chapter 3. Waste-to-wealth by sludge-to-energy: a comprehensive literature reviews
• Chapter 4. 3R for food waste management: fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making for technology selection
• Chapter 5. Life cycle environmental assessment of thermal waste-to-energy technologies and energy–environment–economy model development
• Chapter 6. Sustainability assessment framework for the prioritization of urban sewage treatment technologies
• Chapter 7. Municipal solid waste to electricity development and future trend in China: a special life cycle assessment case study of Macau
• Chapter 8. Life cycle analysis of waste-to-energy pathways
• Chapter 9. Sustainability assessment: focusing on different technologies recovering energy from waste
• Chapter 10. Multi-criteria decision analysis of waste-to-energy technologies
• Chapter 11. Sustainability prioritization of sludge-to-energy technologies based on an improved DS/AHP method
• Chapter 12. Life cycle sustainability prioritization of alternative technologies for food waste to energy: a multi-actor multi-criteria decision-making approach
• Index