Abstract
In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), millions of Muslims come to perform Pilgrimage every year. Around one million ton of municipal solid waste (MSW) is generated in Makkah city annually. The collected MSW is disposed of in the landfills without any treatment or energy recovery. As a result, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and contamination of the soil and water bodies along with leachate and odors are occurring in waste disposal vicinities. The composition of MSW shows that food waste is the largest waste stream (up to 51%) of the total generated MSW. About 13% of the food waste consists of fat content that is equivalent to about 64 thousand tons per year. This study aims to estimate the production potential of biodiesel first time in Makkah city from fat/oil fractions of MSW and highlight its economic and environmental benefits. It has been estimated that 62.53, 117.15 and 6.38 thousand tons of biodiesel, meat and bone meal (MBM) and glycerol respectively could be produced in 2014. A total electricity potential of 852 Gigawatt hour (GWh) from all three sources based on their energy contents, Higher Heating Value (HHV) of 40.17, 18.33 and 19 MJ/kg, was estimated for 2014 that will increase up to 1777 GWh in 2050. The cumulative net savings from landfill waste diversion (256 to 533 million Saudi Riyal (SAR)), carbon credits (46 to 96 million SAR), fuel savings (146 to 303 million SAR) and electricity generation (273 to 569 million SAR) have a potential to add a total net revenue of 611 to 1274 million SAR every year to the Saudi economy, from 2014 to 2050 respectively. However, further studies including real-time data about annual slaughtering activities and the amount of waste generation and its management are critical to decide optimum waste management practices based on life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) methodologies.
Highlights
The increased cost of raw materials production and the competition among economic sectors has encouraged the researchers and policy makers to investigate the cost effective measures for utilizing untapped material resources through the cleaner production technologies [1]
One of the cheap untapped resources is the use of waste streams as feedstocks for energy and valueadded products (VAP) recovery through various techniques, which will reduce the process cost and minimize the waste-related environmental issues [2,3]
The population of Makkah city is projected to be around 3.5 million people with the current growth rate, while 4.4 million pilgrims will visit Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in 2050 (Fig 3)
Summary
The increased cost of raw materials production and the competition among economic sectors has encouraged the researchers and policy makers to investigate the cost effective measures for utilizing untapped material resources through the cleaner production technologies [1]. KSA has one of the largest tourist industry in the world due to the presence of two holiest places for Muslims; Masjid-ul-Haram in Makkah and Masjid-e-Nabwi in Medina [6]. Millions of Muslims from all over the world visit these places every year to perform Pilgrimage [7]. The Pilgrim number is significantly increasing every year due to continuous improvements in transportation, accommodation, availability of food supply and better security services. MSW generation in Makkah city has increased significantly (up to 1 million ton per year) in recent years [8]. Most of the collected MSW is disposed to the landfills without any treatment or material and energy recovery, as no material recovery facility (MRF) and wasteto-energy (WTE), plant exists [9,10]
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