xxxiii. Waste-to-Energy Plants
A waste management facility known as a waste-to-energy plant burns garbage to create power. The role of waste-to-Energy plants in urban infrastructure is immense as they are substitutes for fossil fuels for generating electricity.
A study back in 2019 reported that nearly half of the country’s waste-to-energy plants were lying defunct. And the functioning plants were running at low capacity.
The government has now taken up the cause of waste-energy plants again to move towards garbage-free cities.
The Urban Development Policy is into three parts:
- The Smart City Mission is to modernize cities, e-governance, integrated command and control systems, and a network of CCTV cameras.
- The AMRUT mission is to modernize and rejuvenate physical infrastructure in cities, the RERA Act, setting up a metro network in more than 25 cities, and providing electric buses.
- To make cities clean so that it will be beneficial for the health of people living in cities, especially slum dwellers.
In this direction, we are moving forward through the construction of toilets and preparing waste-to-clean energy plants, solar rooftops, and LED lights.
Along with this, encouragement is also being given to Pradhan Mantri Shahari Awas Yojana, PM Svanidhi Yojana, and digital transactions.
Mountains of garbage are gradually decreasing as many plants have been set up for waste disposal, the gutter system has been streamlined and a scientific network has also been established for the collection of waste across the country.
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Waste-to-Energy Plants |
Municipal and industrial solid trash is converted into power and/or heat for industrial processing at waste-to-energy or energy-from-waste plants. The trash is burned at a high temperature in the energy plant, and steam is created as a result of the heat. After that, the steam powers a turbine to produce energy. Burning rubbish not only generates power but also lessens the quantity of waste that would otherwise be buried in landfills. MSW is reduced in volume by burning by 80%. resulting in a variety of difficult-to-quantify societal and economic benefits. Waste-to-Energy (WTE) technologies to recover the energy from the waste in the form of Electricity and Biogas/Syngas are: Biomethanation is the anaerobic digestion of organic materials which is converted into biogas. Anaerobic digestion is a bacterial fermentation process that operates without free oxygen and results in biogas containing mostly methane (~60%), carbon dioxide (~40%), and other gases. Biomethanation has dual benefits. It gives biogas as well as manure as the end product.
Incineration technology is the complete combustion of waste (Municipal Solid Waste or Refuse derived fuel) with the recovery of heat to produce steam that in turn produces power through steam turbines.
Gasification is a process that uses high temperatures (500-1800 oC) in the presence of limited amounts of oxygen to decompose materials to produce synthetic gas (a mixture of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2)).
Pyrolysis uses heat to break down combustible materials in the absence of oxygen, producing a mixture of combustible gases (primarily methane, complex hydrocarbons, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide), liquids, and solid residues.
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Advantages of waste-to-energy |
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Global data on WTE |
Globally, Waste-to-energy generation is being increasingly looked at as a potential energy diversification strategy.
Municipal solid waste is expected to increase to approximately 2.2 billion metric tons by 2025. MSW generation rates are influenced by several key factors:
Data collected by international organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations suggest that the higher the degree of economic development and urbanization, the greater the amount of solid waste produced. Income level (gross domestic product or GNP) and urbanization are usually correlated as well as disposable incomes and living standards. As the levels of these factors increase, there is a corresponding increase in the generation of solid waste, with urban residents generating almost twice as much solid waste as rural inhabitants. Waste reduction efforts are anticipated to produce a leveling of peak waste in OECD countries by 2050, East Asia and Pacific countries by 2075, and continued growth of waste in Sub-Saharan Africa. Global waste generation is projected to possibly hit 11 million metric tons per day by 2100. |
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Waste-to-energy in India |
The Ministry of new and Renewable Energy is promoting all the technology options available for setting up projects for the recovery of power in the form of Biogas/BioCNG/Electricity. The energy can be generated from agricultural, Industrial, and urban wastes of a renewable nature such as municipal solid wastes, vegetable, and other market wastes, slaughterhouse wastes, agricultural residues, and industrial/STP wastes & effluents. The total estimated energy generation potential from urban and industrial organic waste in India is approximately 5690 MW. To facilitate geographical mapping of the different types of waste availability and its energy generation potential across India, a GIS-Based Waste Mapping Tool has been developed under the GEF–MNRE–UNIDO PROJECT. Program on Energy from Urban, Industrial, Agricultural Wastes/Residues, and Municipal Solid Waste Objectives:
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Way forward |
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