Refuse Derived Fuel Case Study of Waste as Renewable Resource

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S.S.Chen, 1Isnazunita Ismail, 2Abdul Nasir Adnan, 2Puvaneswari Ramasamy

Environment & Bioprocess Technology Centre, SIRIM Berhad, Shah Alam, Malaysia, Email: sau.soon_chen@sirim.my Core Competencies Sdn. Bhd., Bandar Sri Damansara, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Email: puva@c-competencies.com

Abstract Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is one of the key issues that need to be addressed aptly in working towards a sustainable future. Converting the combustible portion of MSW into a refuse derived fuel (RDF) and subsequent firing of these materials as feedstock for producing electricity is one of the best management options of MSW. The advantages of producing RDF followed by its use within the same vicinity to generate power are many. The carbon footprint of RDF electricity is reduced to 0.14 kg/kWh calculated on a cradle-to gate approach when compared to that of the national electric power in Malaysia at 0.60 kg/kWh. The smaller greenhouse gas profile of RDF electricity is attributed to the smaller environmental burden of MSW as a resource material when compared with fossil fuel at the cradle stage, combustion of RDF emits a significant portion of neutral carbon dioxide loading as RDF is made up of almost 90% biomass related materials, and there is also significant resource saving in utilising waste as renewable resource. RDF exemplifies a waste management system of resource recovery from MSW. Keywords: Municipal Solid Waste, Refuse Derived Fuel, Life Cycle Assessment, Greenhouse Gas, Resource Recovery Introduction Rapid urbanisation typical of a fast growing economy is one of the key contributions to the mounting municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in Malaysia. The 2007 average generation rate MSW is about 20,000 tonnes for a population of 26 million, which translate to an estimate of 0.8 kg/person although it has been reported that about of the amount is generated in the city of Kuala Lumpur with a generating capacity of 1 1.3 kg/person.day (Agamuthu, 2007). This compares with the USA at 2.07 kg/person.day for a population of about 301 million (USEPA, 2008), China at 0.23 kg/person.day (Xiao-yan Qu at al. 2008) and European Union at 522 kg/capita.yr (or, average 1.43 kg/capita.yr (EC,2009). Although Malaysia has a waste generation rate that is still lower than the developed countries, the population growth will result in 3% average increase in total MSW generated annually. Almost 95% of the MSW is landfilled. There are small incinerators in some municipalities but in most places, due to technical and financial constrains incineration has not been adopted (Agamuthu et al. 2004). In 2005 there were about 260 landfills in Malaysia and less than 10 are sanitary landfill whereas the remaining are dumpsites. For a sustainable future, the 3Rs is a necessity to solid waste management in any economy. With the current recycling rate of only 4% at national level, there is much that needs to be done from the policy, management and technology perspectives. The coming into enforcement of the Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Act, and the Solid Waste and Public Cleaning Management Corporation Act will enable the Malaysian Government to implement among others, more cost effective and efficient schemes for the collection, transportation and disposal of solid wastes. In addition, there will be greater use of material recovery technologies, including energy recovery from wastes. One of the technologies that have been able to utilise MSW as an energy resource is the production of refuse derived fuel (RDF) which is subsequently used to generate electricity. On average, Malaysian MSW consist of 47% organic waste, 14% plastics, 15% paper and cardboard, 3% textiles, 4% metal, 3% glass/ceramic, 14% others (Agamuthu et al. 2004). Based on the current scenario where sorting at source is minimal, it is a great challenge to utilise MSW as a resource material. However a waste management company in the Malaysia, Core Competencies Sdn. Bhd. (CCSB) has shown the economic viability of producing grid electricity using MSW and has been doing it for the past 5 years.

Sustainable development requires addressing concerns in the social, economic and the environment perspectives. The social and economic aspects of RDF are obvious. However as with all technologies, there can be trade-offs where environmental burdens are passed on to another component of the environment while being treated in one area. One of the environmental impacts that are high on the global list is without a doubt the emission of greenhouse gas (GHG) from anthropogenic activities. This paper will investigate the GHG emission profile of RDF-generated grid electricity from cradle to gate i.e. from the collection of the MSW from a specific municipal to the production of the grid electric power at the RDF plant. MSW to RDF CCSB owns a Refuse Recycling Centre/Waste to Energy (RRC/WtE) facility on a 28-acres land in the state of Selangor Darul Ehsan. The facility receives municipal solid waste from Kajang town with a population of about 0.55 million. Kajang is located 21 km from Malaysias capital city of Kuala Lumpur and typifies a rapid growing township in the country with a mix of industrial, commercial and residential activities.The waste composition comprises predominantly kitchen wastes, plastics and papers that make up of 65 to 75% of the total wastes collected. The RRC/WtE facility process 700 ton/day of municipal solid waste and can generate 8 MW of electricity. The plant recovers maximum proportion of recyclable, reusable and recoverable resources from mixed, municipal solid waste. The recovered recyclable, reusable and recoverable resources of glass, metals and plastics are sold. The combustible materials are converted to an engineered fuel referred to as Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF). RDF is combusted in an engineered RDF combustion grate system with steam generation for power production on site. Residue materials consisting of some inert and non-recyclables and bottom ash and, fly ash are disposed at a sanitary landfill and a hazardous landfill site, respectively. The heat energy released from combustion of RDF will be transformed into electricity with the use of a boiler and turbine steam generator system. Electricity will be used to operate the plant machinery with the remainder being exported to the National Power Grid. The RRC/WtE facility consists of the following physical entities: o o o o o o RDF Plant Recycling Centre Power Generation Area Leachate Treatment Plant Water Treatment Plant Composting Plant.

Within these facilities are the unit processes of: o o o o o o o o o o o o MSW bag splitting Leachate colletion system Magnetic separation Screening process trommel and vibrating screens of various sizes Plastic separation by airlift system Cloth separation manual process Hazardous and recyclables separation manual process Two-stages drying and shredding for drying and sterilisation of combustible portion into bio-inerts Air classifiers as a differential density separator Bunker storage of RDF and feeding to power plant Power plant Effluent treatment ammonia treatment, chemical treatment, anaerobic and aerobic treatment and final polishing

The facility receives MSW for 16 hrs and the waste processing systems will also operate for 16 hours a day to produce enough fuel to run the power plant for 24 hours. The RDF based boiler and power plant is equipped with pollution control equipment to meet the international environmental standards. Developing the Greenhouse Gas Profile of Electric Power from RDF Profile of MSW The Kajang MSW that is utilised at CCSB is characteristed by a mix of 90% combustible and 10% non-combustibles as shown in Figure 1. Breakdown of the combustibles and non-combustibles are also shown. Scope of LCI Study The greenhouse gas emission of electricity generated from the use of RDF, was estimated for a cradle to gate profile covering all unit processes starting with the collection of MSW, MSW sorting, RDF production, combustion of RDF including the transport, distribution network and related water and wastewater treatment and disposal of inert waste. The study will cover emissions generated from the production and use of diverse input materials including emission of greenhouse gas at the RRC/WtE facility, with the intention of identifying hotspots. The product system refers to the production of electricity and non-energy co-products from MSW collected from an urban township. The functional unit will be kg CO2equi/kWh electricity produced from RDF. The system boundary of the study is shown if Figure 2.
5% 1%

1% 6% 3% 1% 2% 2% 4%

Food waste Mix Paper Plas tic Thin Plas tic rigid 44% Poly sty rene Textiles Rubber and Leather Wood

19%

Yard waste Fines 12% Diapers Other combus tibles

6% 11% 32%
Glass Ferrous Aluminium

14% 0% 6% 3% 1% 27%

Non-ferrous Oversize Bulky Material Batteries/Hazardous Other inorganic

Figure 1: Combustible (top) and Non-combustible (bottom) composition of Kajang-MSW.

Air Em issions Solid waste Chem icals Sorting Water D iesel-transport N on-recyclables Recyclables

Internal Utilisation C om bustibles RD F Power generation Grid Distribution

Grid Electricity

R ecyclables

W astes for Landfills

Figure 2: System boundary for the production of grid electricity using MSW as resource material Table 1: Specification of the system characteristics Process
MSW transportation

Process characteristics considered in the system

Transportation of the collected MSW from Kajang area to RRC/WtE plant with assumptions; single trip of 20 km, truck capacity of 10 tons and diesel consumption of 3 km/litre diesel. Separation of the waste mass into its main components, materials for RDF production (combustibles), recyclables materials, inert solids and organic fraction as compost. Composition of RDF materials was approximately 90% biomass and 10% fossil-based materials. Water use, operation of plant, production and transportation of treatment chemicals by freight ship and lorry.

Sorting of waste

Water and wastewater management RDF- power plant Waste gas management Solid waste management

Generation of electricity for power grid and supply for internal usage. Chemicals for the flue gas cleaning system.

Transportation and disposal of inert solids and compost to landfill. Single trip of 30 km, truck capacity of 30 tons and diesel consumption of 1.3 km/litre diesel.

Input and Output Data The input data for the various stages within the cradle to gate estimation of emission for the generation of RDF based electricity are energy, water, chemicals, fuels and electricity consumption, while outputs are electricity and co-products. Co-products are compost and recyclables such as glass, paper and metals that are sold. Foreground data are based on 2-3 years average and background data were obtained from commercial softwares databases namely Simapro 6.0, Gabi and Jemai Pro softwares and literature, and SIRIMs Interim National LCI Database. Allocation The electricity generated is partly utilized in the process subsystem in a close recycling loop within the system boundary and ~98 % is channeled to the grid. Recyclables potentially will go through further processing before being sold. Other than price, it is difficult to allocate the emission between

electric power and the recyclables as they have different units, no allocation was performed on the CO2 emitted per kWh grid electricity. Result of LCI Analysis The GHG profile of grid electricity produced at the RRC/WtE plant is 0.138 kg CO2/kWh. Figure 3 shows the major source of emission is from the combustion of RDF, which was estimated at around 163 ton CO2 per day based on actual measurement of the flue gas released from the stack. However, only the emission from combustion of the 10 % plastic portion of the RDF is included in the GHG profile of the grid electric power. Ninety percent (90%) of RDF is made up of foodwaste and paper, which are considered as biomass with neutral CO2 emission. The sources of emission are ranked ~78% from combustion of the plastic fraction in RDF, ~17% from emission associated with diesel used in transportation of MSW and other non-energy materials produced at the RDF/WtE plant, ~3.5% from background processes related to the production of chemicals used at the plant, and another ~1.5% from the internal use of the RDF electricity.
Diesel (transport)
1.53% 16.80%

Chemicals
3.50%

RDF combustion (plastic fraction)

78.17%

RDF electricity used at site

Figure 3: The distribution of emission sources in the GHG profile of RDF-grid electricity at 0.138 kg CO2/kWh. In working out the greenhouse gas profile of the RDF grid electricity, the principle of off-set related to replacement of fossil fuels for production of electric power was not considered. The avoided emissions associated with the release of methane from landfills used to contain the organic MSW present in the RDF, as well as the recyclables that would replace the virgin materials such as ferrous and non-ferrous metals were also not considered. Conclusions The GHG profile or carbon footprint of grid electricity produced from RDF at the RRC-WtE plant at Semenyih in Malaysia was calculated as 0.138 kg CO2/kWh based on a cradle-to-gate approach. There are a number of advantages of converting MSW to a resource material for power generation. These include reducing the methane emission from landfills that would have been generated from anaerobic degradation of the organic components that constituted a significant portion the RDF. The production and subsequent utilisation of the RDF as fuel is also a better option than incinerating the combustibles in the MSW, particularly combustion of fossil-based materials such as plastic waste increase the atmospheric concentration of GHG. The conversion of waste to electric energy also has a smaller carbon footprint when compared over the life cycle stages of fossil-based electric energy. For example, the GHG profile of electricity produced from conventional fossil fuel sources in Malaysia has been estimated as 0.61 kg CO2/kWh (SIRIM, 2009) from cradle-to-gate, beginning from the extraction of fossil fuels to the generation of electricity at the power plants. The reduction in the carbon footprint between the two sources of fuel, i.e. fossil and RDF is the latter does not carry an environmental burden until the combustion of the plastic portion of the RDF. The RDF and recyclables produced at the RRC/WtE plant also reduces the consumption of depleting resources such as fossil fuel, metals and other minerals that are not

renewable. In this respect, waste management as carried out at the RRC/WtE plant produces sustainable energy and non-energy output. Recommendations The conversion of MSW to RDF and its subsequent utilisation to generate electricity supports the progression towards a sustainable future as it not only has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emission but also reduce consumption of depleting natural resources. References Agamuthu P. (2007): Wet Market Waste to Value-Added Product, The Ingenieur, 34, June August. Agamuthu P., Fauziah S.H., Lingesveeraamani M. Goh K.W., George Blaise A. (2004): Waste Minimisation Strategies for MSW in Malaysia. 5th Asia Pacific Roundtable Discussion on Cleaner Production Regional Conference, Kuala Lumpur. Eurostat (2009): Municipal Waste Generated tsdpc210. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table SIRIM (2009): SIRIM Interim LCI Database USEPA (2008): Municipal Solid Waste in the United States, November issue. Xiao-yan Qu, Zhen-shan Li, Xin-yuan Xie, Yu-mei Sui, Lei Yang and You Chen (2009): Survey of composition and generation rate of household wastes in Beijing, China. Waste Management, 29(10), pp 2618-2624.