Techno-Economic and Environmental Analysis of a Sewage Sludge Alternative Treatment Combining Chemical Looping Combustion and a Power-to-Methane System

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Techno-Economic and Environmental Analysis of a Sewage Sludge Alternative Treatment Combining Chemical Looping Combustion and a Power-to-Methane System

Bareschino, Piero; Chirone, Roberto; Paulillo, Andrea; Tregambi, Claudio; Urciuolo, Massimo; Pepe, Francesco; Mancusi, Erasmo; (2024) Techno-Economic and Environmental Analysis of a Sewage Sludge Alternative Treatment Combining Chemical Looping Combustion and a Power-to-Methane System. Energies , 17 (4) , Article 901. 10.3390/en17040901. Green open access

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Abstract

An innovative process layout for sludge waste management based on chemical looping combustion and flue gas methanation is analyzed in this work. The technical performance of the system was assessed by considering that the flue gas is first purified and then mixed with a pure hydrogen stream sourced from an array of electrolysis cells to produce methane. The life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) methodologies were applied to quantify the environmental and economic performances of the proposed process, and a hotspot analysis was carried out to recognize its most critical steps. The proposed system was then compared with a reference system that includes both the conventional waste management pathways for the Italian context and methane production. Finally, to account for the variability in the future economic climate, the effects of changes in landfill storage costs on sewage end-of-life costs for both the proposed and reference systems were evaluated. With respect to 1 kg/h of sewage sludge with 10%wt of humidity, the analysis shows that the proposed system (i) reduces landfill wastes by about 68%, (ii) has an end-of-life cost of 1.75 EUR × kg−1, and (iii) is environmentally preferable to conventional sewage sludge treatment technologies with respect to several impact categories.

Type:	Article
Title:	Techno-Economic and Environmental Analysis of a Sewage Sludge Alternative Treatment Combining Chemical Looping Combustion and a Power-to-Methane System
Open access status:	An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI:	10.3390/en17040901
Publisher version:	https://doi.org/10.3390/en17040901
Language:	English
Additional information:	© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords:	Sewage sludge disposal; CO2 capture and utilization; methanation; climate change impact; sensitivity analysis
UCL classification:	UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Chemical Engineering
URI:	https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10187682