Multi-period Enviro-Economic Optimization of Municipal Solid Waste to Electricity

The increased production of municipal solid waste has adverse effects on the environment, such as increased greenhouse gas emissions, which drive climate change and accelerate global warming. Waste to energy (WtE) conversion is one of the solutions whereby waste is used to generate energy and mitigate the adverse effects of waste accumulation on the environment. This study proposes a method to select an optimum WtE technology based on multi-objective optimization through enviro-economic analysis of municipal solid waste conversion into electricity using various technologies, such as anaerobic digestion, incineration, gasification, and pyrolysis, and coupled with power generation technologies such as gas engine, gas turbine, steam turbine, solid-oxide fuel cell, and molten carbonate fuel cell technology, in multiple periods (2020–2050), these technologies are simulated using Aspen Plus. An optimization model was developed using General Algebraic Modeling System to determine optimum technologies with the minimum levelized cost of electricity and emission intensity. The energy efficiency of the studied power generation technologies has been validated with the literature and it is found that the deviation is only less than 4% which is within the acceptable range. From the parametric analysis, all the technologies experience cost reduction with GASIF+SOFC has the highest cost reduction with 58.5% from 2020 to 2050. The result shows that the optimum technologies for 2020–2030 period, is pyrolysis combined with a gas engine. The optimum technologies for 2035–2040 and 2045–2050 are pyrolysis with a gas turbine and gasification with solid-oxide fuel cell, respectively. Graphical Abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.]