This paper provides an overview of the integration of Carbon Capture, Utilization, or Storage (CCUS) technologies with Waste-to-Energy (WtE) incineration plants in retrofit applications. It explains the operational principles of WtE incineration, including the generation of both biogenic and fossil CO₂ emissions and the potential for CCUS technologies to mitigate these emissions. In addition, the paper covers the regulatory framework influencing the adoption of such technologies and highlights the recent Directive 2023/959 for the inclusion of WtE incinerators in the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) by 2028. This measure could provide a significant impulse for the integration of CCUS in WtE incineration plants. Moreover, it discusses the use of CO₂ captured, which could be used in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU), and offers a comparison of the CCUS projects that have already been implemented worldwide, with a focus on the Netherlands and Italy. It illustrates the Netherlands’ advantageous position due to its developed CO₂ market and early CCUS adoption, compared to Italy’s emerging market and initial storage solutions.

This study offers a detailed techno-economic assessment of Carbon Capture (CC) integration in an existing Waste-to-Energy (WtE) incineration plant, focusing on retrofit application. Post-combustion carbon capture using monoethanolamine (MEA) was modeled for various low-scale plant sizes (3000, 6000, and 12,000 t of CO₂ per year), using a process simulator, highlighting the feasibility and implications of retrofitting a WtE incineration plant with CC technology. The comprehensive analysis covers the design of the CC plant and a detailed cost evaluation. Capture costs range from 156 EUR/t to 90 EUR/t of CO₂. Additionally, integrating the CO₂ capture system reduces the overall plant absolute efficiency from 22.7% (without carbon capture) to 22.4%, 22.1%, and 21.5% for the different capture capacities. This research fills a gap in studying small-scale CC applications for the WtE incineration plants, providing critical insights for similar retrofit projects.

The aim of the present study is to analyze the performances of unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) and large eddy simulation (LES) approaches in predicting the airflow patterns inside car cabins and to give insight in the design of computational fluid dynamics simulations of a real car cabin. For this purpose, one eddy viscosity-based turbulence model (shear stress transport k–ω) and two subgrid scale models (wall-adapting local eddy-viscosity and dynamic kinetic energy) were tested, and numerical results were compared with particle image velocimetry measurements carried out on a commercial car. The URANS model exhibited great accuracy in predicting the mean flow behavior and was appreciably outperformed by the LES models only far from the inlet sections. For this reason, it was deemed suitable for conducting further analyses, aimed at characterizing the airflow patterns in winter and summer conditions and performing a thermal comfort analysis. The thermal regime was found to have a very little effect on the air flow patterns, once the quasi-steady state regime is achieved; in fact, both in winter and in summer, the temperature field is fairly uniform within the car cabin, making the contribution of buoyancy negligible and velocity fields to be very similar in the two seasons. Findings also reveal that thermal comfort sensation can be different for passengers sharing the same car but sitting on different seats; this aspect should be considered when designing and operating the ventilation system, since the minimum comfort requirements should be met for all the occupants.

1. The car cabin is a controlled indoor environment where people spend significant time, whether for daily commutes or long-distance travel (European Communities 2004; Buonanno et al. 2011). Mainta...