Selection of an appropriate waste-to-energy conversion technology for Dhaka City, Bangladesh

Abstract Solid waste disposal poses a significant problem, as it leads to land pollution if openly dumped, water pollution if dumped in low lands and air pollution if burnt. Moreover, the scarcity of land and increase in land prices especially in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh create the problems of developing new landfill sites. Realising the existing and future impacts of waste disposal issues, the analytic hierarchy process model was applied to select an appropriate Waste-to-Energy (WTE) conversion technology for household waste of Dhaka-Mirpur Cantonment area. Three alternatives, namely, anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis and plasma gasification (PG) technologies and nine criteria under three aspects (technological, environmental and financial) were chosen for comparison. The analysis revealed that PG is the most appropriate WTE conversion technology in the study area. The selected PG technology has a relatively small footprint; it can treat unsorted waste and can produce good-quality synthetic gas without generating extremely toxic by-products.

[1]  M. Ahamad,et al.  Electricity consumption and economic growth nexus in Bangladesh: Revisited evidences , 2011 .

[2]  Linghong Zhang,et al.  Overview of recent advances in thermo-chemical conversion of biomass. , 2010 .

[3]  Thomas Malkow,et al.  Novel and innovative pyrolysis and gasification technologies for energy efficient and environmentally sound MSW disposal. , 2004, Waste management.

[4]  Ange Nzihou.  Toward the Valorization of Waste and Biomass , 2010 .

[5]  A. Azeem,et al.  Selection of the most appropriate package of Solar Home System using Analytic Hierarchy Process model in rural areas of Bangladesh , 2013 .

[6]  Stephen J Burnley,et al.  A review of municipal solid waste composition in the United Kingdom. , 2007, Waste management.

[7]  Noor Ezlin Ahmad Basri,et al.  UrusSisa: An Intelligent System for Integrated Solid Waste Management , 2009 .

[8]  Sanjay Yadav,et al.  Identification and assigning weight of indicator influencing performance of municipal solid waste management using AHP , 2015 .

[9]  Valerie Belton,et al.  On a short-coming of Saaty's method of analytic hierarchies , 1983 .

[10]  R. Marshall,et al.  Systems approaches to integrated solid waste management in developing countries. , 2013, Waste management.

[11]  J. Baeyens,et al.  Principles and potential of the anaerobic digestion of waste-activated sludge , 2008 .

[12]  Pablo Aragonés-Beltrán,et al.  An Analytic Network Process approach for siting a municipal solid waste plant in the Metropolitan Area of Valencia (Spain). , 2010, Journal of environmental management.

[13]  M. Hrabovský,et al.  Production of high quality syngas from argon/water plasma gasification of biomass and waste. , 2014, Waste management.

[14]  Evangelos Triantaphyllou,et al.  USING THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS FOR DECISION MAKING IN ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS: SOME CHALLENGES , 1995 .

[15]  Himan Shahabi,et al.  Evaluating Boolean, AHP and WLC methods for the selection of waste landfill sites using GIS and satellite images , 2013, Environmental Earth Sciences.

[16]  William Hogland,et al.  Solid waste management challenges for cities in developing countries. , 2015, Waste management.

[17]  Jyrki Kangas,et al.  A multi-attribute preference model for evaluating the reforestation chain alternatives of a forest stand , 1993 .

[18]  M. Bohanec,et al.  The Analytic Hierarchy Process , 2004 .

[19]  John R. Argue,et al.  Applying multi-criteria decision analysis to select WSUD and LID technologies , 2012 .