Life cycle inventory of a new process employing rice husk ash for the inertization of air pollution control residues coming from MSWI

In this work the methodology and the main results of the Life Cycle Inventory phase (LCI) of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Cosmos-rice process are presented. Cosmos-rice is a new process for the inertization of air pollution control residues coming from Municipal Solid Waste Incineration (MSWI). The inertization process, which has been developed by the Chem4Tech laboratory of the University of Brescia, uses as stabilizing agent rice husk ash. The LCI analysis conducted over a new technology bears some problems, due, for example, to the lack of primary data (i.e. data gathered on the field) or to the lack of consistency of secondary data (i.e. data taken from literature and databases) with respect to the data quality requirements. Of great interest for the LCI of the Cosmos-rice process is the availability as a source of primary data of pilot plant for the inertization which was designed and built thanks to a project funded by the European Union through the Life+ program (LIFE11 ENV/IT/0000256). The role of a pilot plant seems to be very important to gather data from the field and to conduct a reliable life cycle inventory phase, even though some limitations related to this approach emerge.