Assessment of energy generation potentials of MSW in Delhi under different technological options

Municipal solid waste (MSW) is an important source of methane emission which is a greenhouse gas (GHG) and has high potential for its use as energy source. A study has been carried out to find out the energy generation potential of MSW being dumped in Delhi's three landfills viz. Ghazipur (GL), Bhalswa (BL) and Okhla (OL). Five technologies for waste to energy generation, namely biomethanation, incineration, gasification/pyrolysis, refused derived fuel (RDF) and plasma arc gasification have been evaluated for computation of possible energy (WTE) generation potential of MSW under ideal conditions using the MSW specific characteristic parameters. Bulk waste with and without pre-segregation of reusable high carbonaceous materials have been considered to develop range of energy generation potentials under two scenarios of with and without segregation of MSW. USEPA-LandGem model version 3.02 has been used to get LFG generation potential of Delhi's landfills. The potential of biomethanation process for producing energy has been found to be in the range of 3-10, 3-8 and 2-8 MW/day from the MSW deposited in GL, BL and OL respectively. The energy generation potentials of the MSW deposited in GL, BL and OL have been found to be in the range of 8-24, 7-22 and 7-19 MW/day for incineration process; 17-32, 16-29 and 11-25 MW/day from gasification/pyrolysis process; 9-19, 8-18 and 6-15 MW/day for RDF process; and 17-35, 16-32 and 11-28 MW/day for plasma arc gasification process respectively. The lower values in these ranges depict the energy generation potential for segregated waste while the higher values are for the bulk waste. These values are based on theoretical ideals and help in identifying the optimal WTE technique.