Filomena Ardolino

• Doctor of Engineering
• University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli"

A municipal solid waste information system, named W-MySir, is utilised to acquire high-quality data to implement an attributional life-cycle assessment (LCA) focused on the evolution of the environmental performances of municipal solid waste management in a specific area. The main aim was to investigate how this combined approach can be used for mo...

The recovery of resources from streams of mixed plastics waste is a technological and economic challenge since they contain various (and generally non-compatible) polymers, different (and often hazardous) additives, as well as multilayer structures and fiber-reinforced composites. Only a too limited part of these plastics - such as those coming fro...

Plastic from end-of-life vehicles (ELVP) are currently managed in Europe Union without any attention to polymer recovery. The study analyses novel treatments of sorting, dissolution/precipitation, extrusion, catalytic pyrolysis, and plastic upgrading, which could contribute to define a sustainable ELVP management scheme. The environmental performan...

A new management scheme of plastics from waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), which includes novel treatments of sorting, dissolution/precipitation, extrusion, catalytic pyrolysis, and plastic upgrading, is proposed. Its environmental performances are quantified by an attributional Life Cycle Assessment and compared with those of Eu...

A huge increase of waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is observing everywhere in the world. Plastic component in this waste is more than 20% of the total and allows important environmental advantages if well treated and recycled. The resource recovery from WEEE plastics is characterised by technical difficulties and environmental c...

Air gasification tests have been carried out in a pilot scale bubbling fluidized bed gasifier, able to treat up to 100 kg/h of Eucalyptus wood chips, and operated, under chemical and thermal steady-state conditions, at different values of equivalence ratio. The results are reported in terms of the main process performance parameters and transfer co...

The study reviews and compares the most utilised techniques to obtain high quality biomethane by upgrading biogas from anaerobic digestion of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste. Environmental and economic aspects of membrane separation, water scrubbing, chemical absorption with amine solvent, and pressure swing adsorption have been quant...

The environmental performances of four market-available thermochemical and biochemical processes for energy production from municipal solid biowaste have been compared by means of a combined utilisation of Life Cycle Assessment and Material Flow Analysis. The thermochemical options are those of co-combustion and co-gasification with an unsorted res...

The study compares the environmental performances of a new-generation, large scale, combustion-based waste-to-energy unit, active since 2010, with those of different "virtual" units, defined in the light of the Best Available Techniques REFerence document (BREF) for Waste Incineration published by the European Community on December 2019. The averag...

Background The production of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) is growing continuously and is often directed to composting, an energy‐consuming approach. This study evaluates the advantages of an integrated treatment of waste and wastewater with the application of anaerobic codigestion technology. Results The anaerobic codigest...

Biomethane produced from waste-derived biomass (biowaste) is a clean and renewable fuel, which offers substantial reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and resource consumption. Biomethane is currently produced via the “biogas road” which includes the anaerobic digestion of wet biowaste and a successive upgrading of obtained biogas, with good envi...

The study provides for the first time a life cycle inventory model for the fluidized bed gasification of wastes, based on a large amount of high-quality data. All of them have been obtained from a pilot scale fluidized bed gasifier, fed with ten types of waste and biomass, under a wide range of operating conditions. The model refers to commercial s...

The study aims to demonstrate the overall environmental sustainability of biomethane production by anaerobic digestion of the separately collected organic fraction of municipal solid waste. There is a great interest in the utilisation of biofuels produced from biowaste in the transport sector, due to the benefits of reduced pollutant emissions and...

The study evaluated the environmental performances of an integrated material recovery facility (MRF) able to treat 32 kt/y of unsorted mixed waste, made of residuals from household source separation and separate collection. The facility includes a mechanical sorting platform for the production of a solid recovered fuel (SRF) utilized in an external...

: The paper investigates on a demonstrative scale the technical and environmental aspects of an innovative recycling process of wastes generated by the utilization of absorbent hygiene products (AHPs). The recycling process includes three main sections. An autoclave, coupled with a sorting machine, provides the sterilization of AHP waste and the se...

The paper investigates technical, environmental and social aspects of an innovative recycling process of wastes generated by the utilization of absorbent hygiene products (AHPs). The study is part of a LIFE+ project, named Virgin (Highly-efficient ValorIsation of AHP waste thRough a novel combination of autoclave and GasIficatioN). The project aime...

The paper investigates technical and environmental aspects of an innovative recycling process of wastes generated by the utilization of absorbent hygiene products (AHPs). The recycling process consists of three main sections: an autoclave, which provides the necessary steam sterilization of AHP waste, and it is connected to a sorting machine, which...

An attributional life cycle analysis (LCA) was developed to compare the environmental performances of two waste-to-energy (WtE) units, which utilize the predominant technologies among those available for combustion and gasification processes: a moving grate combustor and a vertical shaft gasifier coupled with direct melting. The two units were assu...

: An attributional life cycle analysis (LCA) was developed for two waste-to-energy (WtE) units, which utilize a moving grate combustor and a vertical shaft gasifier coupled with direct melting, respectively. The WtE units were assumed to be fed with the same unsorted residual municipal waste, having a composition estimated as a European average. Da...