A techno-economic analysis of energy recovery from organic fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW) by an integrated intermediate pyrolysis and combined heat and power (CHP) plant

Abstract

The increasing environmental concerns and the significant growth of the waste to energy market calls for innovative and flexible technology that can effectively process and convert municipal solid waste into fuels and power at high efficiencies. To ensure the technical and economic feasibility of new technology, a sound understanding of the characteristics of the integrated energy system is essential. In this work, a comprehensive techno-economic analysis of a waste to power and heat plant based on integrated intermediate pyrolysis and CHP (Pyro-CHP) system was performed. The overall plant CHP efficiency was found to be nearly 60% defined as heat and power output compared to feedstock fuel input. By using an established economic evaluation model, the capital investment of a 5 tonne per hour plant was calculated to be £27.64 million and the Levelised Cost of Electricity was £0.063/kWh. This agrees the range of cost given by the UK government. To maximise project viability, technology developers should endeavour to seek ways to reduce the energy production cost. Particular attention should be given to the factors with the greatest influence on the profitability, such as feedstock cost (or gate fee for waste), maintaining plant availability, improving energy productivity and reducing capital cost.

Solid Waste Management in Indian Himalayan Region: Current Scenario, Resource Recovery, and Way Forward for Sustainable Development

“…Resource recovery is another alternative that can be utilized for producing oil, wax paraffin, benzene, styrene, terephthalic acid, di-isocyanate, hydrocarbons, hydrogen, and carbon nanotubes from plastic waste through different techniques such as pyrolysis, hydrocracking, and gasification (Fivga and Dimitriou, 2018;Salaudeen et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2018;Yao et al, 2018;Zhang F. et al, 2020;Qureshi et al, 2020). The non-recyclable fraction of the plastic waste recovered after mechanical treatment (MT) can be used as RDF in energy extensive plants like chemical, cement, or paper manufacturing plants (Onwosi et al, 2017).…”

“…pyrolysis, hydrocracking, gasification, and chemolysis are developed to recover plastic waste resources (Al-Salem et al, 2017;Ragaert et al, 2017). Whereas treatments like photodegradation, mechanochemical degradation, and thermo degradation practices have been used for plastic waste degradation (Yang et al, 2018;Zhang F. et al, 2020). These approaches can be considered in the recovery of plastic waste produced in the IHR.…”

Improving waste incineration CHP plant efficiency by waste heat recovery for feedwater preheating process: energy, exergy, and economic (3E) analysis

“…They reported the CO 2 emission of 0.05 ton/h to 0.6 ton/h for various scenarios. Yang et al [20] presented a technical and economic investigation of energy recovery from organic part of waste sources in waste CHP plants. Vida and Lelia [21] studied various possibilities for waste treatment, including recovery or disposal in Romania, covering the development of waste CHP plants.…”

Bio-Gaseous Fuels from Agricultural Waste Pyrolysis (Part I)

“…Pyrolysis represents the thermochemical treatment that can convert the primary fuel into the three mentioned state matters. Different types of biomass and waste have broadly subject to the pyrolysis process in view of single stream or in mixtures (co-pyrolysis), low and high temperature process, heating rate (slow and fast pyrolysis), type of reactors, with or without catalysts, influential factors, products characterization and usage, models prediction, environmental and economic assessments [10][11][12][13][14]. However, technical answers must be filled until it's fully constant usage at an industrial scale.…”