Abstract:
Global population growth added to the tendency of people moving from rural to urban areas allows to forecast that the alarming amount of waste and wastewater generated annually will continue rising. These facts, summed up to the future oil shortage, raw material scarcity and environmental and health detriment, highlight the need to turn waste into a new source of resources. The KREIS project develops and researches new concepts and procedures for the supply of energy and the disposal of wastewater in urban areas. Using the Hamburg Water Cycle® as the basis for the technical concept, KREIS accompanies the realization of the Jenfelder Au urban development project. The objective of this report is to elaborate and test a decision support model for the assessment of bio-resource management processes available in a region, using the Jenfelder Au residential as case study, with a centralized and de-centralized scenario. For that, the 3 step tool includes as a first step data generation, compilation and preparation; a second step for the analysis of the data and a last step for the documentation of the process undertaken. Within it, the efficiency analysis is key. It is based on a material flow and transportation analysis. The Jenfelder Au de-centralized case scenario shows a higher material efficiency, compared to the Hamburg centralized scenario. Regarding transport, the de-centralized case has higher financial needs but generates less CO2 emissions. Based on the results of the tool, it can be concluded that Jenfelder Au’s de-centralized bio-resource management system is more efficient than Hamburg’s centralized bio-resource management system, for the treatment of black water, kitchen waste and lawn clippings generated by 2,400 inhabitants; when comparing the following parameters: substantial recovery, transportation costs and CO2 emissions due to transport of bio-resources. The tool needs to include other aspects in the comparison, like energy flow, other costs, etc. in order to offer a more holistic and realistic assessment.
