Abstract
Hybridization of Waste to Energy (WtE) plants with solar facilities can take competing energy technologies and make them complementary. However, realizing the benefits of the solar integration requires careful consideration of its efficiency. To analyse such systems from the point of view of resource efficiency, the pure energy analysis is not sufficient since the quality of particular energy carriers is not evaluated. This work applies the exergo-ecological analysis using the concepts of thermoecological cost (TEC) and exergy cost for the performance evaluation of an integrated Solar-Waste to Energy plant scheme, where solar energy is used for steam superheating. Different plant layouts, considering several design steam parameters as well as different solar system configurations, in terms of area of heliostats and size of the thermal storage tank, were studied. The results for the solar integrated plant scheme were compared with the scenarios where superheating is performed fully by a non-renewable energy source. The presented results of exergy cost analysis indicate that the most favorable system is the one supported by non-renewable energy. Such an analysis does not consider the advantage of the use of renewable energy sources. By extending the system boundary to the level of natural resource and applying the thermoecological cost analysis, an opposite result was obtained.
Highlights
The strategy of the European Union (EU) for waste prevention and management is based on the following hierarchy: prevention; preparing for re-use; recycling; other recovery, e.g., energy recovery; and disposal [1]
The European Commission [2] communicated that the role of waste-to-energy (WtE) processes can assist in the transition to a circular economy, strengthening the concept that the EU waste hierarchy is the guiding principle and that choices made toward the WtE must not prevent higher levels of prevention, reuse and recycling
Results are compared with the ones obtained for the WtE plant combined with fossil fuel-based superheater
Summary
The strategy of the European Union (EU) for waste prevention and management is based on the following hierarchy: prevention; preparing for re-use; recycling; other recovery, e.g., energy recovery; and disposal [1]. For those streams of waste, for which the material recovery is not effectively applicable, the energy recovery is the path to be followed, while landfilling must be residual and devoted to pre-treated wastes. Residual non-recyclable wastes downstream prevention, reuse and recycling still have interesting energy content [3]. For example residual municipal solid waste (MSW) in EU has a low heating value (LHV) of about 10.3 GJ/Mg [4], with about 50% share of renewable carbon content [5].
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