Technological pathways for bioenergy generation from municipal solid waste: Renewable energy option

World's biggest challenge today is safe disposal and treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW). This review presents an overview of pathways for the generation of the bioenergy from MSW, through the biological-chemical-thermal route of treatment, current status, deployment of biochemical-thermochemical conversion technologies for a biogenic fraction of MSW, its challenges and performance. Currently, key challenges posed to the world are energy security, waste management, and climate change. Out of these, waste management across the world is in the dejected state due to lack of proper treatment and conversion technologies. In recent times, pressure on the global environment increased for the use of renewable resources due to depleting fossil fuels. Energy from biomass waste is going to be one of the crucial and dominant sources of renewable energy harness in the future. Conversion of a biogenic fraction of MSW to energy will solve waste management issue as well as offers energy generation in a sustainable manner and can be termed as "Renewable Waste". This study provides technological pathways for the generation of biofuels using MSW biomass as a feedstock, and the technology progression of various pathways and gaps for implementation of these technologies were also analyzed in this study. (c) 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 38: 654-671, 2019