Abstract
Effective municipal solid waste (MSW) management is essential for sustainable development of a region. Waste management strategies are, consequently, aimed at waste minimisation with material and energy recovery. Rising MSW generation rates, acute shortage of land resources and improving thermal characteristics have collectively contributed to the growth of waste-to-energy sector in developing countries like India. Negligible source segregation and the resultant heterogeneity of the MSW necessitate ascertaining its incinerability to assess the feasibility of the technology. Incinerability index or i-Index is, hence, used to estimate the incinerability of MSW generated in cities across the Indian sub-continent. An incinerability-based map is developed to illustrate the variations in incinerability across the country. The lifestyle habits, topography, income level of the residents, culture and food habits are found to affect the composition and in turn the incinerability. The variations in incinerability of MSW generated in the northern, southern, eastern and western regions are graphically identified using incinerability plot or i-Plot. The reported power generation potential from MSW in Indian states is also found to be consistent with the incinerability of the MSW feed and the daily waste generation rates.
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Abbreviations
- 3-E:
-
Environment, energy recovery and economic criteria
- AHP:
-
Analytic hierarchy process
- C&D:
-
Construction and demolition
- C :
-
Average composition of component (%)
- c j :
-
Component fraction (%) in jth city
- DPR:
-
Detailed project report
- GHG:
-
Greenhouse gas
- GoI:
-
Government of India
- m :
-
Number of cities
- MCD:
-
Municipal corporation of Delhi
- MNRE:
-
Ministry of New and Renewable Energy
- MoEFCC:
-
Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change
- MSW:
-
Municipal solid waste
- n :
-
Number of parameters
- NGO:
-
Non-governmental organisation
- NSDP:
-
Net state domestic product
- NTPC:
-
National thermal power corporation
- NV :
-
Normalised value
- P i :
-
Normalised value of ith parameter
- RDF:
-
Refuse-derived fuel
- TPD:
-
Tonnes per day
- TPY:
-
Tonnes per year
- ULB:
-
Urban local body
- UP:
-
Uttar Pradesh
- w i :
-
Weightage of ith parameter
- WtE:
-
Waste-to-energy
- x j :
-
Per capita generation in jth city
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Sebastian, R.M., Kumar, D. & Alappat, B. Mapping incinerability of municipal solid waste in Indian sub-continent. Clean Techn Environ Policy 22, 91–104 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-019-01771-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-019-01771-4