Ciprian Cimpan

• PhD.
• Professor (Associate) at University of Southern Denmark

Addressing our climate urgency requires various renewable and low-carbon technologies, which often contain critical materials that face potential supply risks. Existing studies on the critical material implications of green transition have used various methodologies, each with pros and cons in providing a system understanding. Here, we integrated t...

Low levels of plastics circularity today reflect major challenges for the sector to reduce environmental impacts and a need for wider systemic change. In this work, we investigated the potential for climate and socioeconomic benefits of circular economy (CE) interventions in the plastic packaging system. By means of a mixed-unit input-output (IO) m...

It is essential to provide quantitative decision support when pursuing environmental impact mitigation efforts, particularly when considering resource and energy-demanding sectors such as the built environment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) provides widely recognized quantitative decision support regarding environmental performance. However, for long...

New policies to promote the circular economy have created an urgent need for businesses and public authorities to quantify and monitor the level of circularity of materials, components and products. However, flows of materials, components and products through society are inherently complex, involving intricate value chains, many stakeholders, and i...

The European Union (EU) set ambitious goals toward more sustainable use of plastics, but the basis for measuring performance and monitoring progress toward these goals remains inadequate due to a limited understanding of the complex systems behind plastic consumption. In this work, we study the region-wide material flows of plastics related to pack...

Understanding how long information and communications technology (ICT) products are used, when they are disposed of, and underlying drivers for consumer behavior, play a defining role in the potential success of current and future policy strategies on circularity in the electronics sector. In this study, we explored the service life and storage sta...

Consumers across the globe tend to store their small electronic devices when they reach their end of life instead of disposing of them. This is a problem because if end-of-life devices are not recovered from consumers’ homes, the devices cannot be re-used or recycled, leading to increased production. We study what motivates consumers to store their...

A crucial first step in transforming problematic waste management into sustainable integrated systems is comprehensive planning and analysis of environmental and socioeconomic effects. The work presented here is a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that addressed the environmental performance of prospective development pathways for the municipal solid was...

This study analyses the socio-economic value of trade of combustible waste, taking Denmark as an example for importing countries with large district heating networks and already high shares of variable renewable energy. An integrated systems analysis framework allowed to assess under which circumstances import of wastes leads to less expensive wast...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to evaluate and compare three different categories of management systems for municipal solid waste (MSW) in Brazil: (1) mixed waste direct disposal systems, (2) separate collection systems, based on wet-dry streams, and (3) mixed waste mechanical-biological systems, including materials recovery. System scenarios...

This work addressed the role of waste-to-energy (WtE) within the growing paradigm of the circular economy (CE), by combining long-term co-optimization of waste management and energy systems, to determine possible economic and climate impact consequences of future WtE capacity utilization. Co-optimization was realized by integration of a network opt...

The European Union is on its way to a circular economy through eco-design, waste prevention, reuse and recycling of products and materials. This study analyzes the environmental effects of end-of-life textile management in Denmark. First, a Mass Flow Analysis was performed for textile flows from sales to consumers to end processes, which revealed t...

In the absence of relevant policies and supporting infrastructure, many developing countries are struggling to establish a resource-oriented waste management system. In countries like Nepal, where informal recycling practices are prevalent, the lack of understanding of the existing system hinders any advancement in this sector. We characterize the...

Integrating product design with appropriate end-of-life (EoL) processing is widely recognized to have huge potentials in improving resource recovery from electronic products. In this study, we investigate both the product characteristics and EoL processing of robotic vacuum cleaner (RVC), as a case of emerging electronic product, in order to unders...

This contribution presents the results of a techno-economic analysis performed for German Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs) which sort commingled lightweight packaging waste (consisting of plastics, metals, beverage cartons and other composite packaging). The study addressed the importance of economies of scale and discussed complementary relati...

Download full report at: http://mst.dk/service/publikationer/publikationsarkiv/2014/maj/shredder-residues-problematic-substances-in-relation-to-resource-recovery/ A project has been carried out to identify or confirm the presence of potentially problematic sub-stances in SR based on: • A desktop study focused on the latest Danish and international...

Primary energy savings potential is used to compare five residual municipal solid waste treatment systems, including configurations with mechanical (MT) and mechanical–biological (MBT) pre-treatment, which produce waste-derived fuels (RDF and SRF), biogas and/or recover additional materials for recycling, alongside a system based on conventional ma...

One year after its introduction in the municipality of Sønderborg, the kerbside collection of commingled recyclable materials from households has significantly altered waste flows and treatment opportunities. This study evaluates the consequences of these changes and compares the performance of the previous and current waste management systems in t...