Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-2021

Abstract

The current barrier to acquisition and utilization of viable waste-to-energy (WTE) technologies at remote or deployed expeditionary sites requires high capital and operation & maintenance costs. The impacts to environment and human health of differing expeditionary waste management strategies were compared using the Life Cycle Assessment software SimaPro 8.0. Emissions of individual waste management scenarios were compiled from peer-reviewed literature, converted to values compatible with SimaPro’s waste scenario inputs, and the calculated impacts compared using SimaPro’s pre-loaded methodologies. These calculated impacts and the economic impacts confirm that open-air burning of waste is not only dangerous to humans and the environment, but is also not cost-effective. Considering the economic effects and the mitigated human and environmental health impacts, WTE technologies may be a viable waste management strategy for the future.

Comments

©2021 The Authors

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Funding note: This work was supported by a grant from the US Air Force Civil Engineer Center.

Journal of Environmental Protection is published by Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

[*] David Chester, Capt. USMC was enrolled as a graduate student at AFIT at the time of publication.

DOI

10.4236/jep.2021.122010

Source Publication

Journal of Environmental Protection

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