Comparison between energy recovery technologies for municipal solid waste and greenhouse gas emissions balance in the city of Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

The present study analyzes the energy recovery potential of municipal solid waste (MSW) and the resulting greenhouse gas (GHG) emission balance in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, based on three alternative technological scenarios. The generation potentials were calculated for waste gas recovery (WGR) to be 363.98 GWhe.year-1 and 0.181 MWhe.t-1, 367.27 GWhe.year-1 and 0.247 MWhe.t-1 for anaerobic biodigestion, and 1.139.33 GWhe.year-1 and 0.459 MWhe.t-1 for incineration. Carbon intensity indicators show that, when only considering GHG emissions from the combustion process, WGR recovery and anaerobic biodigestion present the lowest values, of 7.488.10-4 tCO2eq.MWhe-1, while the value for incineration corresponds to 1.248 tCO2eq.MWhe-1. On the other hand, when considering associated landfill GHG emissions, the indicators in the first two scenarios correspond to 8.191 and 3.552 tCO2eq.MWhe-1, respectively.