Estimation of GHG emission and energy recovery potential from MSW landfill sites

Significant environmental and social problems are associated with rapidly increasing quantity of municipal solid waste (MSW) in recent times. Of various MSW management techniques, landfilling is found as the cheapest to manage about 80% of the MSW all over the world. The present paper is concerned with the estimation of GHG emission potential using software LandGEM, version 3.02, from three landfill sites of Delhi namely: Ghazipur (GL), Bhalswa (BL) and Okhla landfills (OL) sites. The results obtained by different researchers using different methodologies viz. [ 8]. Default, Modified Triangular, First Order Decay (FOD) and In-situ Closed Chamber (ICM) Method are compared with the results of this study and found to be better match with FOD while nearly matching with ICM. The dynamic cost analysis has revealed that GL, BL and OL sites have an economically feasible potential of 3, 2 and 1.5 MW of electricity without subsidy and CDM. The work concludes that LandGEM, version 3.02, is relatively better model for estimation of GHG emission potential of landfills and its use is recommended to assess the energy recovery potential from landfills having capacity more than 2.5 MMT wastes. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.