An Environmental and Techno-Economic Assessment of Household Food Waste Treatment Options in Oxford

1. An Environmental and Techno-Economic Assessment of Household Food Waste Treatment
Options in Oxford
By: Ramy R M Salemdeeb
ABSTRACT
Food waste processing is receiving increasing interest due to severely stringent policies
banning organic waste to be disposed of to landfills, and the Government’s strategic efforts to
tackle climate change. This research aims at addressing the most challenging issues
surrounding household food waste management by undertaking an environmental and techno-
economic assessment regarding household food waste treatment options in Oxford. The study
includes a review of the current food waste management system and alternative scenarios in
an attempt to establish a basis on which an environmentally and economically efficient system
may be developed. The study covers a group of well-established food waste processing
technologies encountered in the UK market, namely in-vessel composting, anaerobic
digestion, gasification and incineration.
Five modelling scenarios were developed presenting four alternative scenarios as well as the
current system in Oxford in order to carry out an assessment based on the projected data up to
the year 2020. The environmental assessment was conducted using WRATE software and the
economic analysis was assessed using a discounted cash flow analysis. Furthermore, a
sensitivity analysis was conducted to identify whether the assumptions made during the
methodology had a significant impact on the results.
The study concludes that anaerobic digestion (AD) delivers the highest overall level of
benefits in terms of its environmental and economic performance. AD demonstrates an
avoided burden of CO2 emissions in addition to a positive economic performance as a result
of government incentives (e.g. Renewable Obligation Certificate scheme). In-vessel
composting ranks second since it requires less money compared to other technologies.
Gasification has a positive environmental performance, although its techno-economic
performance is flawed because of the sophisticated pre-processing stage required and the high

2. capital investment needed. Incineration is considered as the worst option in the study due to
significantly negative environmental burdens and high capital requirements.
Food waste management is a complex multi-faceted problem. Therefore, it is difficult to
present a definitive set of ‘best’ options. Instead, this study presents the impact of each
scenario as well as the advantages and disadvantages in order to enable local authorities and
potential investors to take the right decision to improve the food waste management system in
Oxford. Limitations and areas for further studies are considered throughout this study.