A New, Entropy Based Method To Support Waste and Resource Management Decisions

Title	A New, Entropy Based Method To Support Waste and Resource Management Decisions
Publication Type	Journal Article
Year of Publication	2002
Authors	Rechberger H, Brunner PH
Journal Title	Environmental Science and Technology
Volume	36
Pages	909-916
Keywords	Entropy, Material flow analysis, Resource mangement
Abstract	A new method is presented to quantify the potential of asystem to concentrate or dilute substances. The approachis based on a comprehensive material flow analysis andShannonâ€™s statistical entropy function that is transformed bya three-step procedure. The result is a new functionthat can be applied to any defined system with known massflowsand substance concentrations. In combinationwith materials balances, the method yields quantitativelythe Relative Statistical Entropy (RSE) and the SubstanceConcentrating Efficiency (SCE) of a given system. Whenapplied to compare five solid waste incinerators of increasingtechnology levels, the method (1) gave evidence of thepotential of modern incinerators to control material flowsand (2) pointed to future directions for further improvementof incineration technology. Case studies demonstrate thatthe new tool is well suited to support and complementexisting methods for decision making in waste and resourcemanagement such as LCA.