Comparative life-cycle sustainability assessment of centralized and decentralized remediation strategies at the city level

Song, Yinan, Pan, Sihan, Jin, Yuanliang, O'Connor, David, Nathanail, Paul, Bardos, Paul, Kang, Yang, Zuo, Xiaoyong, Zhang, Hengyong and Hou, Deyi (2024) Comparative life-cycle sustainability assessment of centralized and decentralized remediation strategies at the city level. Science of the Total Environment, 919. p. 170908. ISSN 0048-9697

Text STOTEN LCSA-Manuscript-Clean.docx - Accepted Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 12 February 2026. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (9MB) | Request a copy

Abstract

Remediation of contaminated soil at industrial sites has become a challenge and an opportunity for sustainable urban land use, considering the substantial secondary impacts resulting from remediation activities. The design of soil remediation strategies for multi-site remediation from a regional perspective is of great significance for cities with a large number of brownfields. Centralized and decentralized facilities have been studied in different environmental fields, yet limited research has focused on centralized soil remediation, specifically the treatment of contaminated soil from different sites through the construction of shared soil treatment facilities. This study proposes a framework for comparing centralized and decentralized strategies for contaminated soil remediation based on the integration of life-cycle sustainability assessment and multi-objective optimization. With Zhuzhou, an industrial city in China, serving as an example, results show that after optimization, the centralized scenario can reduce total environmental impacts by 25%–41%. In addition, the centralized scenario can reduce economic costs by 27%–39%, saving up to 176 million USD. The advantages of the centralized soil remediation strategy include: (1) increased use of soil washing, (2) reduced use of off-site disposal, and (3) reduced construction and efficient utilization of soil treatment facilities. In conclusion, the centralized strategy is relatively suitable for cities or areas with a large number of medium or small-sized contaminated sites. The built framework can quantitatively evaluate multiple sites soil remediation at both the city and individual site level, allowing for a straightforward and objective comparison with the optimal remediation design.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Soil remediation, Centralized facility, Life cycle sustainability assessment, Multi-objective optimization
Divisions:	Land and Property Management
Depositing User:	Dr David O'Connor
Date Deposited:	14 Mar 2024 19:49
Last Modified:	14 Mar 2024 19:49
URI:	https://rau.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/16741

Actions (login required)

Edit Item