Abstract
In a mega city like Moscow, both municipal solid waste management and energy systems are managed in an unsustainable way. Therefore, utilizing the municipal solid waste to generate energy will help the city in achieving sustainability by decreasing greenhouse gases emissions and the need for land to dispose the solid waste. In this study, various Waste to Energy (WTE) options were evaluated using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to select the most appropriate technology for the Moscow region. The developed AHP model consists of 4 levels, which assessed four WTE technologies, namely landfill biogas, anaerobic digestion, incineration, and refuse derived fuel (RDF), using four criteria and nine subcriteria. The pairwise comparison was achieved by soliciting 16 experts’ opinions. The priority weights of various criteria, subcriteria, and alternatives were determined using Expert Choice Software. The developed model indicated that landfill biogas is the preferred option with a global weight of 0.448, followed by the anaerobic digestion with a weight of 0.320 and incineration with a weight of 0.138, while the least preferred technology is the RDF with a weight of 0.094. Sensitivity analysis has shown that the priorities of WTE alternatives are sensitive for the environmental and technical criteria. The developed AHP model can be used by the decision makers in Moscow in the field of WTE.
Highlights
According to the World Bank report, in 2017 the amount of solid waste generated globally was about 2.01 billion tones and is expected to increase to 3.40 billion tones by 2050 [1]
This is especially true for Moscow City, where until recently, more than 90% of the municipal solid waste generated by the city and its suburbs (Moscow Region) is disposed of into open dumps and little fraction found its way to sanitary landfills [5,6,7]
The Confederation of the European Waste to Energy Plants reported that in the year 2018, Germany diverted 31% of the total municipal solid waste generated in the country into WTE facilities, while during the same year in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark, the diversion reached more than 50% [11,12,13]
Summary
According to the World Bank report, in 2017 the amount of solid waste generated globally was about 2.01 billion tones and is expected to increase to 3.40 billion tones by 2050 [1]. The report estimates that about 33% of the solid waste generated worldwide is not managed properly and instead openly dumped. More and more countries are adopting Waste to Energy (WTE) systems as a sustainable management option to solid waste generated by municipalities and industries [9]. While many countries around the world are moving from a linear to circular economy, the WTE technologies became part of circular economy models [14], as shown in Figure 1 [15] This is not the case in the Russian Federation, where the contribution of the renewable energy in general and the WTE in particular in the total energy mix of the country is still very low [16,17,18]. One of the priority areas outlined in the strategy is the recovery of energy by adopting waste to energy options. [19]
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