Municipal Solid Waste to Electricity Using Anaerobic Digestion and Incineration Conversion Technologies: A Comparative Study

Abstract

High production of municipal solid waste is currently one of the environmental issue that facing by Indonesia. This leads to the disserve impacts on the environment, community health, and social-economic development. Waste to Energy (WtE) has gradually one of the most important options to achieve energy recovery from municipal solid waste (MSW). This study was performed to choose the optimum WtE technology in multi period (2020-2050) by evaluating techno-economic and environmental analysis of municipal solid waste from Depok into electricity with using two different conversion technologies, namely anaerobic digestion and incineration. This two different technologies were assessed based on its capability to treat municipal solid waste. CO 2 equivalent emission generation from collecting, treatment, and during conversion process is reviewed as an environmental analysis. In this case, the power generation technologies used in anaerobic digestion conversion technology were varied including gas engine, gas turbine, steam turbine, solid oxide fuel cell, and molten carbonate fuel cell, while steam turbine used for incineration system in this study. The optimum technology is chosen based on the lowest Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) and CO 2-eq emission intensity in multi period through comparative analysis. The result shows that incineration has lower cost than anaerobic digestion technology. On the other hands, anaerobic digestion is an environmental friendly technology because it produces lower emission than incineration. In 2020 until 2035, anaerobic digestion with gas turbine technology is an optimum technology chosen which gives more advantages than incineration. However, in 2035-2050, anaerobic digestion combined with SOFC power generation technology gives more advantages in terms of technical, economic, and environmental aspects than all WtE technologies.