Forecasting of waste-to-energy system: A case study of Faridabad, India

Energy plays a major role in the manufacturing process. Technologies used for energy generation and resource utilization were changing very fast. Conventional and nonconventional energy generation process leads to change in the energy recovery pattern. Forecasting of energy needs to be done based on the energy analysis and availability of resources. Dependency on the fossil fuel is more in India, which needs to be relooked for making Indian power sector more energy secure and reliable in the coming decades. In this paper, an attempt is made to forecast the energy generation for the 10 years (2015-2025) from municipal solid waste (MSW) in Faridabad, Haryana, India. Forecasting of MSW was analyzed based on three collection efficiencies (50%, 70%, and 80%) in Faridabad. The result shows that 2.65 kg of MSW is required to generate one unit of electrical energy with thermal conversion system. It was also obtained that approximate 2% of required electrical energy would be obtained from waste-to-energy (WTE) system in Faridabad over a period of 10 years (2015-2025). The result presented here could be a decision matrix for municipalities to develop effective waste management system for upcoming smart cities in India. Moreover, another novelty of this study reflects that cities having similar waste characteristics and population index could adopt this study for waste management and energy recovery. Proposed WTE system would reduce volume of the solid waste thereby improve environment of the city.