Sustainability of Waste Management Systems: Energy Recovery

Abstract

Energy recovery from waste represents an economically, socially, and expectedly environmentally acceptable option of waste management. Energy recovery is widely represented by waste incineration, gasification, pyrolysis, and anaerobic digestion. Sustainability of all energy recovery methods is not only determined by the recovery processes themselves but by a wide range of components of the energy recovery systems, such as waste properties, operating conditions, types of products, and demand on them, to name a few. For example, biowaste is more suitable for anaerobic digestion than incineration. At the same time, incineration of waste without the possibility to utilize heat produced neither as district, nor process heat, could have a higher impact on the environment than its gasification or pyrolysis. When systematically assessing energy recovery methods, the types of products being derived (electricity, heat, chemicals, biogas, monomers, oils, etc.), and the alternatives substituted on the market plays one of the most important roles in the sustainability of energy recovery from waste.