Economic and Environmental Benefits of Energy Recovery from Municipal Solid Waste in Phnom Penh Municipality, Cambodia

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Abstract

This study assessed the energy potential, economic feasibility, and environmental performance of landfill gas (LFG) recovery, incineration, and anaerobic digestion (AD) technologies for Phnom Penh municipality in Cambodia, from 2023 to 2042. The economic analysis utilized the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), payback period (PBP), and net present value (NPV) to evaluate the feasibility of each technology. Additionally, environmental performance was assessed following the IPCC 2006 guidelines. The results indicate that incineration produced the highest energy output, ranging from 793.13 to 1625.81 GWh/year, while the LFG and AD technologies yielded equivalent amounts of 115.44–271.81 GWh/year and 162.59–333.29 GWh/year, respectively. The economic analysis revealed an average LCOE of 0.070 USD/kWh for LFG, 0.053 USD/kWh for incineration, and 0.093 USD/kWh for AD. Incineration and LFG recovery were found to be economically feasible, with positive NPVs and a potential for profit within 8.36 years for incineration and 7.13 years for LFG. In contrast, AD technology had a negative NPV and required over 20 years to generate a return on investment. However, AD was the most promising technology regarding environmental performance, saving approximately 133,784 tCO2-eq/year. This study provides valuable technical information for policymakers, development partners, and potential investors to use in order to optimize waste-to-energy investment in Cambodia.

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What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050

Silpa Kaza, Lisa Yao, Perinaz Bhada-Tata … (2018)

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A review of technologies and performances of thermal treatment systems for energy recovery from waste

Ennio Carnevale, Andrea Corti, Lidia Lombardi (2015)

The aim of this work is to identify the current level of energy recovery through waste thermal treatment. The state of the art in energy recovery from waste was investigated, highlighting the differences for different types of thermal treatment, considering combustion/incineration, gasification and pyrolysis. Also different types of wastes - Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) or Solid Refuse Fuels (SRF) and some typologies of Industrial Waste (IW) (sludge, plastic scraps, etc.) - were included in the analysis. The investigation was carried out mainly reviewing papers, published in scientific journals and conferences, but also considering technical reports, to gather more information. In particular the goal of this review work was to synthesize studies in order to compare the values of energy conversion efficiencies measured or calculated for different types of thermal processes and different types of waste. It emerged that the dominant type of thermal treatment is incineration associated to energy recovery in a steam cycle. When waste gasification is applied, the produced syngas is generally combusted in a boiler to generate steam for energy recovery in a steam cycle. For both the possibilities--incineration or gasification--co-generation is the mean to improve energy recovery, especially for small scale plants. In the case of only electricity production, the achievable values are strongly dependent on the plant size: for large plant size, where advanced technical solutions can be applied and sustained from an economic point of view, net electric efficiency may reach values up to 30-31%. In small-medium plants, net electric efficiency is constrained by scale effect and remains at values around 20-24%. Other types of technical solutions--gasification with syngas use in internally fired devices, pyrolysis and plasma gasification--are less common or studied at pilot or demonstrative scale and, in any case, offer at present similar or lower levels of energy efficiency.