Resource-efficient treatment of organic industrial waste: Optimization of different treatment options using reMIND

The aim of this work was to find the optimal resource-efficient treatment alternative for organic waste from the food industry. For that, four different treatment methods for thirteen feedstocks were studied: animal fodder production, incineration, biological treatment and biogas production. An optimization model was used to find which treatment alternative is the optimal from a variety of perspectives.

The studied systems were evaluated from three different evaluation perspectives: economy, energy and environment. The energy evaluation included two different electricity systems: coal condensing power and wind energy.

The results show that there is no single optimum feedstock treatment method taking all the perspectives studied into account. Instead, it is important to consider all different perspectives when evaluating the resource efficiency of the treatment method for a feedstock. However, both incineration and anaerobic digestion of the food waste can be considered as resource-efficient treatment options for the studied feedstocks.