Waste to energy management is the activities required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes the collection, treatment, transport, and disposal of waste, together with monitoring and regulation of the waste management process.
The increasing urbanization, industrialization, and changes in the pattern of life, which react process of economic growth, give rise to a generation of increasing quantities of wastes leading to increased threats to the environment. Recently, technologies have been developed that not only help in generating a substantial quantity of decentralized energy management but also helps in reducing the quantity of waste for its safe disposal.
Waste Management Hierarchy
Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) is the process of generating energy in the form of electricity and heat from the primary treatment of waste, or the processing of waste into a fuel source. Waste to Energy is a form of energy recovery. Most WtE processes generate electricity and/or heat directly through combustion, or produce a combustible fuel commodity
Thermal technologies:
Gasification: produces combustible gas, hydrogen, synthetic fuels
Thermal depolymerization: produces synthetic crude oil, which can be further refined
Pyrolysis: produces combustible tar/bio-oil and chars
Plasma arc gasification or plasma gasification process (PGP)
Non-thermal technologies:
Anaerobic digestion: Biogas rich in methane
Fermentation production: examples are ethanol, lactic acid, hydrogen
Mechanical biological treatment (MBT)
MBT + Anaerobic digestion
MBT to Refuse derived fuel
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