CONSIDERATIONS ON WASTE CHARACTERIZATION AND THE PRODUCTION OF ENERGY: HOW USEFUL CAN WASTE BE?

Abstract

The proposed work reports a compilation of municipal solid waste composition in several geographies, discussing the impacts and repercussions of different waste classification nomenclature and related definitions. In addition, different scenarios are evaluated using the average waste composition in each location to further describe the possibility of covering the energy demand in those places, with energy produced from waste. For that, the thermal conversion efficiency of each Waste-to-Energy (WtE) procedure (combustion, incineration, hydrothermal liquefaction, pyrolysis, gasification, and plasma gasification) was used, so that a comparison of performances is put forward, to potentially aid in policy- and/or decision-making processes. Hydrothermal liquefaction presented higher efficiencies, followed by gasification-based techniques. Incineration, combustion and pyrolysis show a declining performance. In terms of waste production, OECD countries exceeded the average waste production values as well as the energy demand per capita, while Europe and Central Asia depicted the lowest contribution of energy produced from the waste generated.