“Waste to Energy: A case study for North and North-West of Jerusalem Municipalities
Date
2019-01-20
Authors
Abutabikh, Dana
Mobarakeh, Haya
Asho, Yasmeen
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Abstract
Our developing world faces many problems; one of these is waste problem. There are huge quantities of waste produced each year and can’t find a place to go. In conjunction with that, energy sector suffers a lot from lack of resources and increasing in the demand. Fortunately, we can catch two birds with one stone which is Energy recovery from waste.
Palestine is facing the problem of SW like any country in the world due to increase of the population, the lack of appropriate places for the wastes and shortage of sanitary landfills. Also, there are a lot of challenges facing the Palestinian energy sector. The complications of the current political situation add their own challenges to the environment. There is limited Palestinian control over land and resources. Area C is one of the most affected places, building and administrative restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on the development and implementation of waste management infrastructure projects in these places. So, we take the North and North West of Jerusalem as a case study which are 16 Local Authorities consisting of 5 municipalities and 11 councils that are largely neglected by the authorities and are oppressed by the occupation and its barbaric-actions .
The scope of this research is to achieve an effective waste to energy technology. This study assessed the municipal solid waste as a valuable renewable energy resource and as worldwide opportunity of energy recovery by using waste to energy technologies. In this study, the generation of municipal solid waste was assessed to estimate the energy generation potential in the N & NW of Jerusalem. In this study three scenarios were following. The first scenario was without sorting, incineration or gasification for all amounts of MSW. The second scenario was with sorting, centralized bio-digestion or decentralized bio-digestion for organic of MSW and pyrolysis for plastic of MSW. The third scenario was with sorting, centralized bio-digestion or decentralized bio-digestion for organic of MSW and incineration or gasification for plastic, paper and others. Calculations clearly illustrated that by the thermo chemical process, the electrical energy from the incineration of MSW technology without sorting was estimated 112 MWh/day and with sorting was 42.4 MWh/day. And the electrical energy from the gasification of MSW technology without sorting was estimated 64.9 MWh/day and with sorting was 24.4 MWh/day, but from Pyrolysis of plastic was 16.11 MWh/day. By using biochemical processes, the electrical energy from the centralized bio-digestion was estimated 22.4 MWh/day.
The economic analysis of each WtE technology for each scenario in this study has shown that in scenario one of the first year the incineration of MSW has a larger capital cost and revenues than gasification $ 26.7 million and 3.3 million $/yr respectively. But, it has lower running cost of $1.88 million. The gasification capital cost was $ 21.6 million and the running cost was $ 2.3 million with revenues reaches 0.72 million $/yr. In scenario two, the centralized bio-digestion has a total cost at first year, $ 2.8 million and revenues was 0.66 $/yr. However, the investment cost for the pyrolysis of plastic was $ 5.7 million and operating costs was 0.33 million $/yr with revenues of 0.47 million $/yr. In scenario three, at the first year the incineration of MSW has a larger capital cost and revenues than others $ 10.9 million and 1.2 million $/yr respectively with the lowest running cost 0.35 million $/yr. But, centralized bio-digestion has the lowest total cost and revenues was $ 2.8 million and 0.66 million $/yr. And the gasification capital cost was $ 9.0 million and running cost was $ 0.87 million with revenues reaches 0.72 million $/yr.
According to decentralized bio-digestion in scenario one and two, the costs of the home biogas digester for houses with the availability of a garden were $ 159,144 and with agricultural activity was $ 156,315. And the costs for the houses with rearing of livestock $ 65,07. But, the costs for all numbers of housing unit were $ 1,850,315.
The recommendation of this study is choosing the best scenario with less of environmental or economic aspects. According to the environmental aspect, the gasification and pyrolysis are environmentally friendly with low harmful gases if suitable treatment systems followed. In Anaerobic Digestion can avoid environmental hazard if the correct operation assured and leakage avoided. But, the incineration has the very bad effect on the environment.
According to economic aspects and without considering the capital cost of each technology, the incineration is recommended with the largest revenues and less running cost. Also the centralized bio-digestion and pyrolysis is good economically, but with fewer revenues. And the gasification is the largest running cost, but reasonable revenues. So, the decision is related to stakeholders in determining their priorities and possibilities by referring to the detailed study that be introduced.