Techno-Economic and Environmental Assessment for Biomethane Production and Cogeneration Scenarios from OFMSW in Mexico

Abstract

Mexico City is one of the largest cities in the world and therefore there is a high generation of waste, of which 44% is equivalent to the Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste (OFMSW). In this work, a characterization of the household OFMSW was carried out, and two case studies were evaluated for the application of biogas production by anaerobic digestion process using OFMSW. CASE I considers obtaining biomethane, while CASE II involves energy cogeneration. An economic and environmental evaluation was carried out on different amounts of OFMSW (100–500 MT). The net present value (NPV) of this project (CASE I, NPV = − US$18,915,067/year and CASE II, NPV = − US$28,636,890/year) does not show the viability of the process, unless the support of a subsidy is considered. The value of the subsidy to find NPV = 0 is 5.64% for CASE I and 6.84% for CASE II, on the total investment at 200 MT of OFMSW. On the other hand, the WAste Reduction (WAR) analysis algorithm was used to determine the potential for environmental impact (PEI). This criterion considers the indexes of eight categories, where CASE I = 574,820 PEI/year and CASE II = 570,479 PEI/year. The in-depth research of this work helps to maintain the anaerobic digestion process in a circular economy context.Graphic Abstract