An overview to current status of waste generation, management and potentials for waste-to-energy (Case study: Rasht City, Iran)

This paper presents an overview of the current municipal solid waste (MSW) management in Rasht City, Guilan Province, Iran, followed by evaluating the potential for waste-to-energy. The data of different MSW functional elements were collected from previous works, available reports, interviews and meetings with specialists in the field. About 800 tons MSWs are generated in Rasht per day, of those, over 75% are organic wastes followed by paper and cardboard comprising 5.9%. The daily theoretical energy contained in the city MSWs was estimated to be over 591.62 megawatt hour (MWh, over 215942.54 MWh per year). Almost 500 tons of daily MSWs are directly transferred to Saravan as the biggest landfill in north of Iran with an area of about 30 ha, while the remaining portion is treated in the Guilan composting plant. Landfill mining calculations showed that we could recycle about 3008947, 36793, 61443 and 18366  tons of plastics, textile, wood and  rubbers collected from Saravan landfill respectively. A simple assessment of waste-to-energy potentials from organic wastes using operational conversion coefficients revealed that by employing the combination of waste-to-energy and gas turbine technology, an estimated energy of 227.668 MWh can be produced from the Rasht daily food wastes. Although MSW management in Rasht  has been improved over the last decade owing to the establishment of waste recycling and composting organization, however it is still far from the standard situation due to lack of comprehensive waste management planning, financial resources and infrastructures