Life Cycle Assessment of a Sewage Sludge and Woody Biomass Co-gasification System

Srikkanth Ramachandran; Zhiyi Yao; Siming You; Tobias Massier; Ulrich Stimming; Chi-Hwa Wang

doi:10.1016/j.energy.2017.04.139

Publication details

Life Cycle Assessment of a Sewage Sludge and Woody Biomass Co-gasification System

Publication data

Type:

Journal article

Authors:

Srikkanth Ramachandran, Zhiyi Yao, Siming You, Tobias Massier, Ulrich Stimming and Chi-Hwa Wang

Published in:

Energy, vol. 137
(Electronic ISSN: 0360-5442)

Publisher:

Elsevier, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

Publication date:

October 2017

Pages:

369–376

Abstract:

Replacing a part of energy derived from fossil fuels with bioenergy derived from solid waste streams may be a promising method to tackle the dual crisis of increasing waste pile-up and global climate change. In this study we propose a decentralised sewage sludge and woody biomass co-gasification system for Singapore. We evaluate the greenhouse gas emission of the proposed system and compare it to the existing system through life cycle assessment. The proposed system is expected to provide a net annual emission reduction of 137.0–164.1 kilotonnes of CO₂eq. Increase in electricity recovery, carbon sequestration in the biochar produced and the avoidance of the use of supplementary fuel for sewage sludge incineration are the major contributors for the emission reduction. The proposed system is able to increase the net electricity production from sewage sludge and woody biomass by 3–24 %. This could lead to an annual increase in electricity recovery of 12.1–74.8 GWh. It is estimated that the proposed system can produce 34 kilotonnes of biochar annually. It is found that decentralisation helps to reduce the annual tonne-km driven by 4.23 million tonne-km which could decrease the number of on-road vehicles required for waste handling.

Keywords:

Waste-to-energy, Gasification of sewage sludge, Decentralised waste disposal, Biochar, Life cycle assessment

DOI:

10.1016/j.energy.2017.04.139

Further information

Part of project:

TUMCREATE Phase II — Towards the Ultimate Public Transport System

Resources

Version of record (external link)

Accepted manuscript (download)

Go back to the previous page

Format: BibLaTeX BibTeX

@article{Ramachandran_LifeCycleAssessment_2017,
  author    = {Ramachandran, Srikkanth and Yao, Zhiyi and You, Siming and Massier, Tobias and Stimming, Ulrich and Wang, Chi-Hwa},
  title     = {Life Cycle Assessment of a Sewage Sludge and Woody Biomass Co-gasification System},
  year      = {2017},
  month     = oct,
  journal   = {Energy},
  issn      = {0360-5442},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands},
  volume    = {137},
  pages     = {369--376},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.energy.2017.04.139},
  keywords  = {Waste-to-energy, Gasification of sewage sludge, Decentralised waste disposal, Biochar, Life cycle assessment},
}

@article{Ramachandran_LifeCycleAssessment_2017,
  author       = {Ramachandran, Srikkanth and Yao, Zhiyi and You, Siming and Massier, Tobias and Stimming, Ulrich and Wang, Chi-Hwa},
  title        = {Life Cycle Assessment of a Sewage Sludge and Woody Biomass Co-gasification System},
  date         = {2017-10},
  journaltitle = {Energy},
  issn         = {0360-5442},
  publisher    = {Elsevier},
  location     = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands},
  volume       = {137},
  pages        = {369--376},
  doi          = {10.1016/j.energy.2017.04.139},
  keywords     = {Waste-to-energy, Gasification of sewage sludge, Decentralised waste disposal, Biochar, Life cycle assessment},
}

Copied✓