Technical potential of electricity production from municipal solid waste disposed in the biggest cities in Brazil: Landfill gas, biogas and thermal treatment

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of possibilities for electrical energy production by using municipal solid waste disposed in the biggest Brazilian cities. Currently, the municipal solid waste in Brazil is collected and disposed of at landfills, but there are also other technologies, which in addition to dealing with the garbage can also provide benefits in terms of energy provision. The following scenarios were studied in this work: electricity production from landfill gas (reference scenario); incineration of all municipal solid waste; anaerobic digestion of organic waste and incineration of refuse-derived fuel fractions after being separated in separation plants. According to this study, the biggest cities in Brazil generate about 18.9 million tonnes of municipal solid waste per year (2011), of which 51.5% is biogenic matter. The overall domestic consumption of electricity is 480,120 GWh y(-1) in Brazil and the municipal solid waste incineration in the 16 largest cities in the country could replace 1.8% of it using incinerators. The city of São Paulo could produce 637 GWh y(-1) with landfill gas, 2368 GWh y(-1) with incineration of municipal solid waste and 1177 GWh y(-1) with incineration of refuse-derived fuel. The latter two scenarios could replace 27% and 13.5% of the residential electrical energy consumption in the city. This shows that thermal treatment might be a viable option of waste-to-energy in Brazil.

Avaliação dos parâmetros cinéticos da geração de metano em uma célula experimental de resíduos sólidos

“…No Brasil, nota-se nos últimos anos uma maior tendência para fazer o aproveitamento energético do gás metano nos aterros sanitá-rios, principalmente pela queima em motores de combustão interna (BARROS, 2013;TIAGO FILHO;LEME et al, 2014;SOUZA et al, 2014;NADALETTI et al, 2015). O dimensionamento de projetos de aproveitamento do metano em aterros sanitários para a geração de eletricidade baseia-se normalmente em modelos cinéticos de primeira ordem exponencial (SPOKAS et al, 2006;MACHADO et al, 2009;MACIEL & JUCÁ, 2011;ABREU, 2014;WANGYAO et al, 2010).…”

The Role of Renewable Energy in the Promotion of Circular Urban Metabolism

“…In Mexicali and Tijuana (Mexico), the generation of energy from landfill gas could compensate for 6-40% of the demand for lighting, respectively [64]. In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), the calculation by Souza et al [66] shows that the production of biogas could compensate for approximately 7% of the electrical energy.…”

“…The use of incineration technologies currently presents technical or economic difficulties, while gasification and pyrolysis are not available on a commercial scale [86]. Using incineration techniques to produce fuel recovered from waste or municipal solid waste can increase the production of energy two and four times, respectively, with respect to the biochemical processes [66].…”

“…São Paulo (Brazil) 7.30% 8723.6 GWh/year Landfill biogas [66] Performs an analysis of the technical potential for the production of electricity using urban solid waste. Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) 6.73% 5481 GWh/year Tartu (Estonia) 54.5% 1.29 million liters of diesel 0.14 tons of natural gas Fuel for transport [59] The biogas potential of greening waste was calculated.…”

Electricity production using renewable resources in urban centres

“…In Mar del Plata, Argentina, it was established that the use of forest residues (from pruning urban trees and garden maintenance) could supply 4·36% of the energy demand (Roberts et al, 2015). In Tijuana, Mexico, it was estimated that landfill gas can provide 40% of the required electricity for public lighting services (Aguilar-Virgen et al, 2014), whereas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 25% of the city's energy could be supplied by burning urban solid waste (de Souza et al, 2014). In Wageningen, the Netherlands, it is estimated that 12% of the electrical energy demand can be covered by wind power (Agudelo-Vera et al, 2012).…”