Aplicación de técnicas de ciclo de vida al diseño de un sistema de gestión de residuos urbanos para la ciudad de chihuahua

Identifier:  TDX:353

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX353

Authors:  Gómez Méndez, Maria Guadalupe

Abstract:
The management of the solid waste in the municipalities is an important aspect for the protection of the health and the environmental. The generation of solid waste increases with the increasing of population and its composition depends on the human activity, geographic location, life style, etc. The study is divided in two sections: the first contains the characterization of the urban solid waste in the city of Chihuahua and the second is the environmental evaluation of possible scenarios for solid waste management, applying the methodology of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). The characterization of solid waste was realized in three neighbourhoods with different income level. The waste was collected during three seasons of the year, obtaining the organic fraction in main quantity (47%), followed by paper (17%) and plastic (13%). These results are average of the three levels and during the three seasons of analysis. The quantity of metal and glass was very similar in the three levels. The generated quantity during the studied three seasons, for the levels I, II and III is in average of 0.522, 0.634 and 0.637 kg capita-1dia-1. The current waste system in Chihuahua (called, Landfill sanitary (RS)) and also four different new scenarios of waste management were evaluated by means of the LCA methodology. The four scenarios are: modern RS, Digestion-modern RS, ReCoRSmodern (recycled, composting and modern RS), and ReCoIncineration (recycled, composting and incineration). The considered functional unit was one tonne of origin waste and the studied impact categories were the abiotic depletion, global warming, human toxicity, photo-oxidant formation, acidification and eutrophication. The scenarios with the best environmental impact in all the categories were the ReCoRSmodern and ReCoIncineration, because of the recycling of waste fractions, production of compost, and recovery of energy. The worst scenario was the current RS, presenting an adverse environmental impact because of the emissions of gas and lixiviate without control.