Techno-environmental-economic evaluation on municipal solid waste (MSW) to power/fuel by gasification-based and incineration-based routes

Abstract The energy cascade utilization of municipal solid waste (MSW) is an important subject to realize sustainable development. The gasification-based option has shown great potential in resource recovery with high-efficiency conversion. In this study, the techno-environmental-economic performance of Waste-to-Power (WtP) and Waste-to-Fuel (WtF) technologies, including MSW integrated gasification combined cycle (MIGCC), MSW-to-hydrogen (MTH), MSW-to-synthetic natural gas (MTNG) and MSW incineration to energy (MTE), is analyzed and evaluated based on the Aspen Plus simulation. The results show that MTH process owns the highest exergy efficiency with 46.7%, followed by MTNG (43.7%), MIGCC (28.6%) and MTE (18.9%). The MTH and MTNG processes appear to be more environmentally friendly than MTE in terms of global warming potential (GWP). The levelized profit of MSW (LPOM) for MIGCC process is the lowest under current market conditions. By comparison, the MTH process exhibits the best economic performance in resisting the fluctuation of electricity sales tariff, carbon tax and MSW subsidy price. In addition, MTH process could be regarded as a promising alternative path to produce hydrogen because of its economic advantage than coal-to-hydrogen and biomass-to-hydrogen processes.