A comprehensive insight into Waste to Energy conversion strategies in India and its associated air pollution hazard

With the increasing demand for cheap energy sources, Waste-to-Energy (WtE) strategies are gaining importance across the world. In India, such strategies have a two-way benefit i.e., generating electricity using municipal solid waste and helping in solid waste management by reducing the need for landfill sites. In this review, the focus has been given to identifying and analysing toxicological problems related to major air pollutants emitted during the WtE conversion process. Depending upon the country and state, the nature of solid waste and emission standards vary which directly impacts air quality standards and steps required to reduce such emissions. In India, the percentage of wet solid waste is much higher than dry solid waste which significantly deters the economic and technical feasibility of WtE plants. The heating value of solid waste reduces significantly when improper waste segregation occurs which is detrimental from both the electricity generation and pollution viewpoint. These problems associated with solid waste management have been covered in detail in the manuscript. This review article also provides a comparative study of Indian WtE plants with their global specifically European counterparts. The adverse effect of pollutants emitted from WtE plants on human health has been discussed in the article along with the air pollution control methods to mitigate the problem. To gauge the importance and limitation of WtE plants over conventional solid waste management strategies such as landfills, the environmental impact assessment has also been discussed which further justifies the necessity of the present article.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).