Municipal Solid Waste Treatment Using Plasma Gasification with the Potential Production of Synthesis Gas (Syngas)

This research was conducted for the purpose to overcome Indonesia waste problem. The samples are classified into garden waste, paper waste, wood, food waste, and MSW with objective to identify which type of waste give out more syngas since there is waste separation in Indonesia. All samples were treated by plasma gasification without pre-treatment (drying). Arc plasma torch used in this experiment was made by National Nuclear Energy Agency (BATAN) and used Argon as the gas source. Then the torch was connected to self-designed gasification chamber and gas washing system before injected into a gas bas for composition analysis. Another objective is to identify factors that may affect the gasification efficiency and the experiment shows that moisture content is not really affecting the efficiency but the duration of the process. The mass reduction of each samples were recorded, then the gas produced from the gasification process were analyzed. The result shows that food has the highest mass percentage reduced and producing the highest amount of hydrogen amongst other samples. However, treating MSW also produce considerably high amount of hydrogen. In conclusion, MSW direct treatment (without separation) using plasma gasification is feasible since it still produces desirable quality of syngas.