Comparison of Technologies to Serve Waste to Energy Conversion

Abstract

The increasing demand of energy has led to a chaos among the existing energy sources whether it may be thermal, nuclear, hydro or solar power. Hence, it becomes important for an alternate, feasible and sustainable energy source. Municipal solid waste (MSW) serves as an efficient and reliable option for the conversion of waste to energy since long. But the problem exists with the conversion technology which imposes restriction on its use. This paper discusses the different conversion technologies which include incineration, pyrolysis, gasification and biomethanation. The technologies are compared on various physical and chemical parameters with keen interest on environmental sustainability of the waste to energy (WtE) system. The evaluation results reveal that the biological methods are best suited for the waste to energy conversion with least degradation of the environment. Other methods such as incineration, pyrolysis and gasification are quite efficient and give a high yield but they harm the environment in the form of harmful gaseous emissions which certainly lead to global warming and greenhouse effect. This study can overall contribute to the development of more efficient and specific WtE technology which would help lower the MSW reaching the landfills generating cleaner energy to serve the future generation.