Using Life Cycle Assessment in Investigating Electricity Generation Potential: (By Harnessing Garbage)

Abstract

Solid waste is a waste that is predominantly domestic garbage. These wastes can be solid or semisolid form, but does not include industrial or hazardous wastes. Energy Recovery from garbage is not a new idea globally but the method of determining the energy content of the waste stream has developed over the period. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool used to determine the environmental impact, of any product from its raw material (cradle) stage to finally being discarded (grave) as a waste deposit. LCA can also be useful in identification of effective waste management system and in determining the energy content of a waste stream. For a complete LCA, scenarios have to be created which will aid the studies by comparing results of activities with the base case scenario. For this study, two scenarios were created, the base case scenario and energy recovery scenario. In the Base Case Scenario all the waste generated is taken to landfill. While in the Energy Recovery Scenario energy and material recovery is involved. From the result of the LCA, about 12MW of electricity can be recovered by harnessing the Garbage in UTM. With associated high decrease in environmental emissions from 5 tons of CO₂ and 390Kg of deposited goods at the landfills to -0.97 tons of Co₂ and no deposited goods because materials can be recovered from the waste that can be recycled. Gabi Software was used for the LCA assessment.

Keywords: Scenario, LCA, Landfill, Gabi Software, University Technology Malaysia, energy recovery