Design of an incinerator working on solar PV powered electrolyzer for municipal solid waste management

Abstract

The rise in urbanization and growth has made managing municipal solid waste more challenging. The most developed and practical approach to managing municipal solid waste is incineration technology. It has become a challenge as a both environment and high energy consuming sector. Normally, incineration technology uses fossil fuel to combust the waste for incineration process. This fuel is required to assist in combustion due to high content of moisture. Fossil fuel on burning not only a source of extra pollution but also depleting day by day. This study gives a novel method to incinerate MSW with the help of hydrogen produce as HHO gas. This HHO gas was result of electrolysis process of water by using electrolyzer. Further, electrolyzer was energized with solar PV to make whole incineration system as a green solution for municipal waste management. Current proposed incineration system in a lab-scale prototype showed effective incineration. This incineration system was able to reduce weight by 97.1% while loss on ignition was quantified as 1.41% after incineration process. Based on the lab-scale setup and its results, a portable incinerator was designed that was able to incinerate 10kg of MSW. It was calculated that an electrolyzer was required with a capacity of 10 LPM was required for this portable incinerator.