Waste to energy: A case study of Madinah city

The concept of energy from waste is getting popular nowadays across the globe, as being capable of producing multi fuels and value-added products from different fractions of municipal solid waste (MSW). The energy recovery technologies under this concept are anaerobic digestion (AD), pyrolysis, transesterification, refuse derived fuel (RDF) and incineration. This concept is very relevant to implementation in countries like Saudi Arabia, who wants to cut their dependence on oil. Moreover, the waste to energy becomes the imperative need of the time because of new governmental policy ‘Vision 2030’ that firmly said to produce renewable energy from indigenous sources of waste, wind and solar and due to given situations of Hajj and Umrah with massive amounts of waste generation in a short period. This study focused on two waste to energy technologies, AD and pyrolysis for food (40% of MSW) and plastic (20% of MSW) waste streams respectively. The energy potential of 1409.63 and 5619.80 TJ can be produced if all of the food and plastic waste of the Madinah city are processed through AD and pyrolysis respectively. This is equivalent to 15.64 and 58.81 MW from biogas and pyrolytic oil respectively or total 74.45 MW of continuous electricity supply in Madinah city throughout the whole year. It has been estimated that the development of AD and pyrolysis technologies will also benefit the economy with net savings of around US $63.51 and US$53.45 million respectively, totaling to an annual benefit of US $116.96 million. Therefore, in Saudi Arabia and particularly in Holiest cities of Makkah and Madinah the benefits of waste to energy are several, including the development of renewable-energy, solving MSW problems, new businesses, and job creation and improving environmental and public health

Waste-to-energy potential in the Western Province of Saudi Arabia

AbstractWaste-to-energy (WTE) is a viable option for municipal solid waste (MSW) management and a renewable energy source. MSW is a chronic problem in Saudi Arabia and more specifically in Saudi Urban areas. The MSW practices in KSA are simply done by collecting the waste and dumping it in open landfill sites. KSA is considering WTE as a potential renewable energy source that can contribute to electricity demand in the Kingdom. This research aims to assess potential contribution of WTE facility to meet electricity demand in the three main cities in the Western Province of Saudi Arabia and to provide an alternative solution to landfills. Three scenarios for WTE utilization were developed: Mass Burn, Mass Burn with recycling, and refused derived fuel (RDF) with biomethanation. The Mass Burn scenario implies full waste stream incineration; the Mass Burn with recycling scenario considers segregation of reusable materials and the waste leftover for incineration; while RDF with biomethanation considers segregation of general waste stream into inorganic and organic waste and utilizes organic waste for biomethanation and inorganic for RDF. The analyses were completed for Jeddah, Makkah, and Madina cities; with current total population of about 6.3 million. The results show that Jeddah has the potential to produce about 180MW of electricity based on incineration scenario; about 11.25MW based on incineration with recycling scenario; and about 87.3MW based RDF with biomethanation scenario by the year 2032. These values and other two cities values are based on theoretical ideals and they help in identifying the optimal WTE techniques for each city