Abstract
Population growth, rapid urbanization, industrialization, and shift in people’s standard of living have changed solid waste generation trends. This has affected solid waste management, particularly in urban areas of developing countries. Solid waste management in the developed world has often addressed these issues by adopting sustainable waste management approaches. Solid waste to energy (SWtE) has evolved as one of the important options in achieving sustainable solid waste management. This approach offers waste volume reduction and energy recovery with minimal environmental concerns. The treatment process of SWtE involves four phases: waste preparation, thermal/thermochemical/biochemical conversion, the process of energy recovery, and air pollution control. By-products of these processes are energy, ashes, and solid and liquid effluents. This chapter reviews solid waste-to-energy technologies (incineration, pyrolysis, gasification, anaerobic digestion, and sanitary landfilling with gas recovery). It evaluates the performance in terms of energy recovery and volume reduction, economics, the environment, and public health implications. This chapter argues that environmentally sound waste management for cities is possible by employing appropriate waste-to-energy (WtE) technique, but it requires thorough understanding of the characteristics and composition of the waste generated. The characteristics of waste (such as calorific value, waste density, particle size, and moisture content) are the parameters which govern the selection of suitable WtE technology. By way of contribution to literature, it delineates SWtE process into technological variations, solid waste as potential source of energy, and environmental concerns. This categorization provides a basis for comparison of SWtE approach with the other options for effective waste management.
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Kulkarni, B.N., Anantharama, V. (2021). Solid Waste to Energy: A Prognostic for Sound Waste Management. In: Baskar, C., Ramakrishna, S., Baskar, S., Sharma, R., Chinnappan, A., Sehrawat, R. (eds) Handbook of Solid Waste Management. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7525-9_86-1
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