HiQLCD Waste Treatment Data Pack

Waste treatment often consists of a sequence of processes. Dewatered sludge may proceed to drying, incineration or another utilisation route, while food-waste treatment must define the subsequent destination of digestate. The pack retains information on such combinations, allowing projects to model the actual treatment chain instead of assigning every waste flow to one generic disposal process.

Dataset scale

The three system models contain 7,130 datasets in total: 2,673 Cut-off, 2,709 EN 15804 and 1,748 Consequential datasets. The Cut-off inventory contains 21 products or treatment services after deduplicating the original reference-product names. All three models cover 31 provincial-level administrative regions in mainland China and also include records for Hong Kong. Dataset counts include different geographies, activities and reference products and do not represent an equal number of independent treatment technologies.

Main waste streams and treatment scope

Municipal solid waste

Coverage includes municipal incineration, sanitary landfill and related market activities. Selected incineration records distinguish energy-recovery options such as electricity, heat or combined heat and power, helping users align energy outputs and study boundaries with the actual facility. Some activities include city-level geography.

Food waste and associated wastewater

Coverage includes aerobic treatment such as mechanical composting and greenhouse composting, together with pathways in which digestate from anaerobic digestion is composted, incinerated or landfilled. Food-waste wastewater treatment records are also available, allowing relevant processes to be selected for the waste streams included in the project.

Wastewater and leachate

Coverage includes domestic sewage, industrial wastewater, and technologies such as A/A/O, A/A/O+MBR, CASS, CAST, MBBR, oxidation ditch, constructed wetland, hydrolytic acidification and A/O combinations. Landfill- and incineration-leachate records also distinguish selected regions or climate zones for project-specific review.

Sludge treatment and subsequent use

Coverage includes combinations of thickening, dewatering, drying, anaerobic digestion, aerobic composting, wet oxidation, pyrolysis and carbonisation, and incineration. Subsequent destinations include landfill, land application and selected construction-material uses, allowing treatment technology and final destination to be considered together.

Recovered products and supporting infrastructure

Coverage includes selected recycled EPS, HDPE, LDPE, PET and PP pellets, biogas and waste-collection activities. Infrastructure data cover medium-sized urban, small county-level and small township wastewater plants, as well as urban or rural sewer construction, providing options for construction stages within treatment systems.

HiQLCD Waste Treatment Data Pack: dataset composition

Under the Cut-off model, the pack contains 2,673 records.

Municipal solid waste accounts for 1,671 records, or 62.51%, mainly covering incineration, sanitary landfill and related market activities. Wastewater and industrial wastewater account for 772 records, or 28.88%, covering domestic sewage, industrial wastewater and detailed treatment processes. Together, these categories represent 91.40% of the pack.

Sludge treatment accounts for 52 records corresponding to 21 activity names and covers combinations of dewatering, drying, digestion, incineration and utilisation. Leachate treatment accounts for 48 records corresponding to 24 activity names and includes technologies for incineration and landfill leachate. Sewer networks and treatment infrastructure account for a further 76 records, covering urban and rural pipelines and wastewater plants of different scales.

Other content includes 31 industrial-residue treatment records, eight food-waste and associated wastewater records, eight waste-collection records, and seven recycled-plastic and biogas records. Examples include pressure leaching of tellurium-bearing tailings, food-waste composting and anaerobic digestion, collection of waste electrical equipment and batteries, and selected recycled plastics and biogas. Coverage depth varies by category, so matching should follow the actual waste stream and treatment technology.

Basis of calculation: this composition applies only to the Cut-off model. Record counts include different geographies and activity types.

HiQLCD Waste Treatment Data Pack: technology and applications

Value of detailed treatment pathways

Organise sludge as a continuous process chain

Sludge records include combinations such as “centrifugal dewatering–drying–incineration–construction material” and “thickening–anaerobic digestion–land application”. Selection should reflect the actual process and state of the waste flow rather than matching only the label “sludge treatment”. For a defined engineering scheme, a combined record can represent the subsequent treatment destination.

Account for both food-waste treatment and residual flows

Anaerobic digestion is only one stage in the treatment pathway. The inventory separately lists selected destinations for digestate, including composting, incineration and landfill, allowing projects to distinguish downstream options under the same primary treatment technology. Whether associated wastewater and other inputs are included in the selected record must be checked against its boundary.

Distinguish treatment services from recovered products

Some records use a waste-treatment service as the reference product, while others may use recovered electricity, heat, secondary material or biogas. Treatment quantities and recovered-product quantities should therefore be matched to their respective units. Recovery benefits are handled according to the selected system model; records must not all be treated as disposal data per kilogram of waste.

Geographic information and regional applicability

Selected domestic-sewage and municipal-solid-waste data extend to the city level, while other activities may use provincial, regional or national backgrounds. The Cut-off inventory contains 392 identifiable geographic labels at different levels. This figure includes national, provincial, city and other regional labels and should not be described as 392 cities.

Where the treatment location is known, users can search that geography first and then check the treatment technology and waste properties. For product assessments with an undefined end-of-life route, a defensible treatment scenario can be created with the chosen geography and pathway documented.

Typical applications

Product end-of-life assessment

Match suitable disposal or recovery activities to the product composition and its actual end-of-life routes. Plastic parts sent to material recycling and mixed municipal waste treatment, for example, require different reference products and processes and should be modelled separately according to the project scenario.

Analysis of wastewater and sludge treatment options

Match the actual wastewater-treatment route and quantity, sludge moisture content and subsequent destination to relevant records, then analyse different process combinations. Treatment-infrastructure data can be included where required by the project boundary and coordinated with the accounting scope for operation.

Resource-recovery and circularity studies

Build scenarios around recovered materials, energy products and residual waste flows to compare recovery pathways within a complete model. The way secondary products enter subsequent systems should be defined, with consistent allocation and recycling rules.

Working with the Core and Energy Data Packs

The Core Data Pack can supply general chemicals, materials and logistics used by the treatment system, while the Energy Data Pack can provide the relevant electricity, heat or fuel background. Users should first determine which inputs and outputs are already included in the treatment record, then add only missing stages to avoid double counting energy, transport or recovery processes.