Real Large-Scale Waste Management and Electricity Generation by Incineration and Methanation Routes: Methodologies and Comparative Investigation on Local Municipal Waste Landfills

Recent decades have dramatically increased energy demand due to globalization, rapid economic development, and rising urban populations. The emergence of climate change and global warming coincided with this increased demand, sparking even more discussion about the urgent need for an energy transition. Currently, a rising amount of biodegradable trash is burnt and then carried to landfills for disposal, which consumes a large amount of land and causes health issues due to a lack of regulation. Consequently, innovative and environmentally friendly recycling techniques are urgently required. This work aims to study real-case waste management and valorization conducted in El Berka Zerga’s landfilling center (Annaba, Algeria), where two separate systems were implemented to provide electricity to the landfill and the surrounding urban zone. Two main methods were used for generating electricity from garbage: natural Methanation, which makes use of the full potential of the location under study, and waste incineration, which is based on a mathematical model that has been translated into MATLAB. Waste recovery showed a minimum power capacity of 11.6 kW associated with the center’s steady-state emissions of natural methane and a maximum power capacity of 3.3 MW associated with the peak emissions achieved recently. The incineration process also showed a steady-state capacity of 10.04 MW, resulting in a daily burning of 500 tons. The production of valuable products from agro-industrial wastes is a low-cost and green process highly recommended by environmental and scientific communities.