Cost of Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Residual Municipal Waste Treatment

conference paper

English

Municipal solid waste (MSW) treatment leads to the production of the considerable amount of residual municipal waste (RES), which can be hardly materially recovered. Its treatment represents a worldwide challenge, since the traditional method, landfilling, is greenhouse gas (GHG) emission-intensive. Approx. 128 mil. tons of MSW was landfilled or incinerated within the EU-28 in 2016 and the waste management sector produced 3% of the overall GHG emissions. The contribution analyses the relation between GHG emissions and cost of RES treatment. A reverse logistic model has been developed to optimise future strategies of RES treatment by waste-to-energy (WtE) facilities in a large geographical area consisting up to hundreds of micro-regions. The problem is a multi-objective mixed integer model, which newly integrates non-linear functions, where costs for RES treatment and avoided GHG emissions are subject to WtE plant capacities. This is due to local aspects of future WtE integration into existing district heating systems and related heat delivery, which is currently produced from fossil fuels. The effect of substitution is locally dependent, which together with the heat demand profile during the year causes non-linear cost and avoided emissions functions. The results are presented through a case-study for the Czech Republic, where 206 nodes with waste production, 146 landfill sites, 4 existing WtE plants and 35 candidate locations for new WtE plants have been considered. The proposed future concepts involving various processing chains (small WtE, large WtE with complex logistic, mechanical biological treatment prior to incineration), are compared with the current state (2016), where 73% of RES is landfilled.

emission cost; greenhouse gas; optimisation; waste treatment; facility location

PAVLAS, M.; NEVRLÝ, V.; PUTNA, O.; ŠOMPLÁK, R.

30. 9. 2018

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