Clean Energy From Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)

Abstract

The global energy demand has increased at a very large rate, and in parallel, the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) has also increased, both posing enormous technological challenges to world sustainable growth. Therefore, in order to contribute with concrete alternatives to face such quest for sustainability, this work presents an analysis of an integrated power plant fired by municipal solid waste that uses a biological filter for the combustion emissions fixation. The facility located in the Sustainable Energy Research & Development Center (NPDEAS) at Federal University of Parana is taken as a case study to analyze the process of technical and economic viability. For that, an exergoeconomic optimization model of the waste-to-energy power plant that generates electricity and produces microalgae biomass is utilized. An incineration furnace, which has a 50 kg/h capacity, heats the flue gas above 900°C and provides energy for a 15 kW water-vapor Rankine cycle. A set of heat exchangers preheats the intake air for combustion and provides warm utility water to other processes in the plant, which assures that the CO2 rich flue gas can be airlifted to the microalgae cultivation photobioreactors (PBR) at a low temperature, using a 9 m high mass transfer emissions fixation column. Five 12 m3 tubular photobioreactors are capable of supplying up to 30,000 kg/year of microalgae biomass with southern Brazil solar conditions of 1732 kWh/m2 per year. The results show that considering the incineration services, the integrated power plant could have a payback period as short as 1.35 years. In conclusion, the system provides a viable way to obtain clean energy by thermally treating MSW, together with microalgae biomass production that could be transformed in a large variety of valuable bioproducts (e.g., nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, animal feed, and food supplements).