Municipal Solid Waste Management Options in India: Insights from Exergy Analysis

Abstract

Like most developing economies, India is starting to generate increasing quantities of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). The rate of generation of MSW is particularly high in its urban areas. The city of Mumbai generates about 7,500 tons of MSW/day. Most of the MSW generated, is usually disposed off in open dumps and landfills, due to lack of space for landfill and overload of the municipal corporations. In addition to serious air pollution, it also contaminates ground water with increased concentrations of heavy metals and toxic elements. Huge generation rate of MSW, very slow rate of decomposition in landfills, land scarcity, social and environmental problems associated with waste managed create an urgent need for treatment processes that can treat the waste quickly and in an economically feasible and environmentally and socially sustainable manner. Exergy analysis has been found to be an appropriate method for material resource accounting, identifying and reducing losses and improving efficiency, and process optimization (1)(2). This work compares the waste management practices of incineration, plasma gasification, and land filling based on their exergy loss and efficiency, and emissions. The focus of this study is on evaluating the exergetic efficiency of these technologies in the Indian context, considering the facts that the composition, climate, segregation practices, moisture content of MSW, etc. in a developing tropical country like India differ significantly from those of developed societies, which have been the location of previous such studies. Introduction. Rapid economic growth, rising consumerism, and increasing population and industrialization in developing economies like India are resulting in increased utilization of material resources and impact of anthropogenic activities. Excessive and inefficient utilization of material resources in society leads to a generation of increasing quantity of waste. The challenge of managing municipal solid waste is increasingly severe in urban areas, more so in megacities like Mumbai. In India, the urban population is increasing at a rate of approximately 40% (3), and the urban population in 2010 produced 56 million tonnes of waste. This growth and inadequate waste management facilities add to concerns about emissions such as those of methane from waste, which contribute approximately 3 % of the total anthropogenic GHG emissions (4).