Review of biowastes to energy in Malaysia: Current technology, scalability and socioeconomic analysis

Abstract

Malaysia is experiencing rapid urbanisation leading to an increase in the demand of energy. The use of renewable energy can satisfy energy demands and mitigate environmental issues such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. Biogas produced from anaerobic digestion from different feedstock such as food waste (FW), palm oil mill effluent (POME), garden waste (GW), landfill, sewage sludge (SS) and animal manure can be utilised to reduce the need of fossil fuel. This review paper will focus on the current biogas technologies, their scalability and socio-economic analysis on biowastes to energy in Malaysia. If all FW generated in Malaysia (approximately 15,000 tonnes per day) could be converted to energy, it has a potential to replace fossil fuel totally, as it produces 10 times more than the annual requirement of energy. Consequently, there is a significant advantage obtained from offsetting huge amounts of GHG emissions that would otherwise be contributing to the global warming effect. Several issues and challenges have been identified for the scale-up of laboratory scale to industrial scale where parameters including pH, temperature, organic loading rate (OLR), hydraulic retention time (HRT) and mixing rate must be treated carefully. The socio-economic survey conducted as part of this study has revealed the strong acceptability of this technology and the readiness of the population in Malaysia to contribute and be part of this effort. However, the survey has also identified the limitations of the sorting and preparation facilities of food waste segregation for potential biogas generation.