Life cycle assessment for municipal solid waste treatment and utilization

Using the method of life cycle assessment (LCA), the paper studies systematically on municipal solid waste incineration and ecological engineering treatment in Guanghai City. The results showed that the environmental impact potentials of incineration and ecological engineering treatment is 4.89x10-2 and 1.23x10-2 respectively ; the net energy consumption is -3.44x102 MJ/ton and -2.90x101 MJ/ton, respectively; the net treatment cost is 84.76 RMB Yuan/ton and 32.52 RMB Yuan/ton, respectively. Comparing with sole incineration, ecological engineering integrates the advantages of incineration and composing, which not only can reduce the amount of waste for incineration and decrease the second environmental pollution, but also can produce high quality compound fertilizer by adding certain amount of chemical fertilizer into compost. It is proved that ecological engineering treatment is an environmental sustainable and economic afforadably method.