LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT (LCA) AS A MEANS OF COMPARISON BETWEEN ACTIVE AND PASSIVE REMEDIATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR WASTEWATER AND CONTAMINATED SOILS

none3Life Cycle Assessment is a powerful and widespread tool to evaluate the environmental efficiency of products and processes. An application is reported of the Life Cycle Assessment tool in an unusual field for this method such as the evaluation of remediation techniques for contaminated soils and water in order to understand the environmental impacts related with clean-up interventions. The initial goal of the study was to assess technology-specific impacts of two different remediation systems, but soon the lack of appropriate tools to address the use of natural resources such as groundwater became self evident. The difficulty to address similar issues (i.e. land use) through the LCA methodology appeared in other fields of application too, suggesting the need to find new methodological tools to fill this methodological gap (Bayer and Finkel, 2006). Objectives In this case study it has been used to investigate the behavior of two different technologies for the remediation of polluted groundwater on a Life Cycle perspective (Lemming et al., 2010). The main focus of the LCA study was to address the environmental benefit deriving from the in-situ remediation operated by the PRB, which leaves groundwater in the aquifer instead of discharging it as surface water as the PTS does, thus allowing the conservation of a natural resource which cannot be restored in short periods.mixedBonoli, A.; Antonozzi, L; Zanni, SBonoli, A.; Antonozzi, L; Zanni,