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Techno-economic assessment of waste sorting scenarios regional case study: Madaba sorting plant, Jordan

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Abstract

Material Recovery Facilities (MRF) shall play a strategic role in developing countries to satisfy the sustainable development. The aim of this paper is to carry out a scenario-based techno-economic assessment of a local government MRF located in Madaba, Jordan. Two operational scenarios were identified to improve the recycling process and to increase the economic revenues. The first scenario includes a sorting process with and without a ballistic separator and the second is a Refused Derived Fuel (RDF) production scenario. An economic model was developed and it relied on the investment indices namely, NPV, ERR and the payback period. The results indicated that a product-recycling scenario with three working shifts is feasible starting from a process feed capacity of 14,500 and 12,700 ton/y with and without a ballistic separator, respectively. The External Rate of Return (ERR) achieved with and without the ballistic separator was 24.6% and 21.3%, respectively and the payback period was 4 years for both cases. The second scenario consisted of exploring the economic feasibility of RDF production, which was feasible starting from an 80% MSW collection level and a selling price of 70 JOD/ton of RDF. An RDF price higher than 117 JOD/ton is cost effective at the other proposed collection levels.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research is accomplished as a contribution to the Waste to Positive Energy (Wt(P)E) project in Jordan. We thank our colleague Dr. Abdallah Nassour from the University of Rostock who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted the research and Dr. Safwat Hemidat for his valuable input.

Funding

This work was supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic co-operation and Development (BMZ) through grant contract Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GIZ “Waste to positive Energy (Wt(P)E) project”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, German Jordanian University, Amman, 11180, Jordan

    Arwa Abdelhay & Munjed Al Sharif

  2. Environmental and Renewable Energy Engineering, German Jordanian University, Amman, 11180, Jordan

    Amro Al-Hroub

Authors
  1. Arwa Abdelhay
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  2. Amro Al-Hroub
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  3. Munjed Al Sharif
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Contributions

This work has been derived from the MSc. thesis of the student [AAlH], which was under the supervision of [AAy]. All authors contributed to the study conception and design. The experimental approach was set by all authors. Data collection was performed by [AAlH]. The data analysis was performed by [AA], [AAlH]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [AA] and all authors added their comments on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Arwa Abdelhay.

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Abdelhay, A., Al-Hroub, A. & Al Sharif, M. Techno-economic assessment of waste sorting scenarios regional case study: Madaba sorting plant, Jordan. J Mater Cycles Waste Manag 25, 582–596 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-022-01543-1

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