IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v12y2019i6p1066-d215496.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Applications of the 3T Method and the R1 Formula as Efficiency Assessment Tools for Comparing Waste-to-Energy and Landfilling

Author

Listed:
  • Stergios Vakalis

    (Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bolzano, Piazza Università 5, 39100 Bolzano, Italy
    School of Chemical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 9 Iroon Polytechniou Str., Zographou Campus, GR-15780 Athens, Greece)

  • Konstantinos Moustakas

    (School of Chemical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 9 Iroon Polytechniou Str., Zographou Campus, GR-15780 Athens, Greece)

Abstract

The assessment of novel waste-to-energy technologies has several drawbacks due to the nature of the R1 formula. The 3T method, which aims to cover this gap, combines thermodynamic parameters in a radar graph and the overall efficiency is calculated from the area of the trapezoid. The present study expands the application of the 3T method in order to make it suitable for utilization in other energy-from-waste technologies. In the framework of this study, a 3T specialized solution is developed for the case of landfilling plus landfill gas recovery, with the potential inclusion of landfill mining. Numerical applications have been performed for waste-to-energy and landfilling by using both the R1 formula and the 3T method. The model Land GEM was used for the calculation of the total landfill gas. The Combined Heat and Power (CHP) efficiency of the landfill gas CHP efficiency was 16.6%–33.1%, and for the waste-to-energy plant, the CHP efficiency was over 70%. The full range of parameters, like metal recovery and quality of CHP, were not fully reflected by the R1 formula, which returned values of 1.07 for waste-to-energy and from 0.37 to 0.63 for different landfilling scenarios. Contrary to that, the 3T method calculated values between 0.091 and 0.307 for the waste-to-energy plant and values between 0.011 and 0.121 for the various landfilling scenarios. The 3T method is able to account for the recovery of materials like metals and assess the quality of the output flows. The 3T method was able to successfully provide a solution for the case of landfilling plus landfill gas recovery, with the potential inclusion of landfill mining, and directly compares the results with the conventional case of waste-to-energy.

Suggested Citation

  • Stergios Vakalis & Konstantinos Moustakas, 2019. "Applications of the 3T Method and the R1 Formula as Efficiency Assessment Tools for Comparing Waste-to-Energy and Landfilling," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-11, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:6:p:1066-:d:215496
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/6/1066/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/6/1066/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lora Grando, Rafaela & de Souza Antune, Adelaide Maria & da Fonseca, Fabiana Valéria & Sánchez, Antoni & Barrena, Raquel & Font, Xavier, 2017. "Technology overview of biogas production in anaerobic digestion plants: A European evaluation of research and development," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 44-53.
    2. Ana Ramos & Carlos Afonso Teixeira & Abel Rouboa, 2018. "Environmental Analysis of Waste-to-Energy—A Portuguese Case Study," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-26, March.
    3. Umberto Di Matteo & Benedetto Nastasi & Angelo Albo & Davide Astiaso Garcia, 2017. "Energy Contribution of OFMSW (Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste) to Energy-Environmental Sustainability in Urban Areas at Small Scale," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-13, February.
    4. Juraščík, Martin & Sues, Anna & Ptasinski, Krzysztof J., 2010. "Exergy analysis of synthetic natural gas production method from biomass," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 880-888.
    5. Sues, Anna & Juraščík, Martin & Ptasinski, Krzysztof, 2010. "Exergetic evaluation of 5 biowastes-to-biofuels routes via gasification," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 996-1007.
    6. Ola Eriksson & Göran Finnveden, 2017. "Energy Recovery from Waste Incineration—The Importance of Technology Data and System Boundaries on CO 2 Emissions," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-18, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vakalis, Stergios & Moustakas, Konstantinos & Loizidou, Maria, 2019. "Energy efficiency of waste-to-energy plants with a focus on the comparison and the constraints of the 3T method and the R1 formula," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 323-329.
    2. Krzysztof Gaska & Agnieszka Generowicz & Anna Gronba-Chyła & Józef Ciuła & Iwona Wiewiórska & Paweł Kwaśnicki & Marcin Mala & Krzysztof Chyła, 2023. "Artificial Intelligence Methods for Analysis and Optimization of CHP Cogeneration Units Based on Landfill Biogas as a Progress in Improving Energy Efficiency and Limiting Climate Change," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(15), pages 1-19, July.
    3. Martin Pavlas & Jan Dvořáček & Thorsten Pitschke & René Peche, 2020. "Biowaste Treatment and Waste-To-Energy—Environmental Benefits," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-17, April.
    4. Józef Ciuła & Agnieszka Generowicz & Anna Gronba-Chyła & Iwona Wiewiórska & Paweł Kwaśnicki & Mariusz Cygnar, 2024. "Analysis of the Efficiency of Landfill Gas Treatment for Power Generation in a Cogeneration System in Terms of the European Green Deal," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(4), pages 1-16, February.
    5. Józef Ciuła & Violetta Kozik & Agnieszka Generowicz & Krzysztof Gaska & Andrzej Bak & Marlena Paździor & Krzysztof Barbusiński, 2020. "Emission and Neutralization of Methane from a Municipal Landfill-Parametric Analysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-18, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vitasari, Caecilia R. & Jurascik, Martin & Ptasinski, Krzysztof J., 2011. "Exergy analysis of biomass-to-synthetic natural gas (SNG) process via indirect gasification of various biomass feedstock," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 3825-3837.
    2. van der Heijden, Harro & Ptasinski, Krzysztof J., 2012. "Exergy analysis of thermochemical ethanol production via biomass gasification and catalytic synthesis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 200-210.
    3. Rovas, Dimitrios & Zabaniotou, Anastasia, 2015. "Exergy analysis of a small gasification-ICE integrated system for CHP production fueled with Mediterranean agro-food processing wastes: The SMARt-CHP," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 510-517.
    4. Kolb, Sebastian & Plankenbühler, Thomas & Hofmann, Katharina & Bergerson, Joule & Karl, Jürgen, 2021. "Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of renewable gas technologies: A comparative review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    5. Saidur, R. & BoroumandJazi, G. & Mekhilef, S. & Mohammed, H.A., 2012. "A review on exergy analysis of biomass based fuels," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 1217-1222.
    6. Ana Ramos & Carlos Afonso Teixeira & Abel Rouboa, 2019. "Environmental Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste by Two-Stage Plasma Gasification," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-16, January.
    7. Kotowicz, Janusz & Sobolewski, Aleksander & Iluk, Tomasz, 2013. "Energetic analysis of a system integrated with biomass gasification," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 265-278.
    8. Atsonios, Konstantinos & Kougioumtzis, Michael-Alexander & D. Panopoulos, Kyriakos & Kakaras, Emmanuel, 2015. "Alternative thermochemical routes for aviation biofuels via alcohols synthesis: Process modeling, techno-economic assessment and comparison," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 346-366.
    9. Karami, Kavosh & Karimi, Keikhosro & Mirmohamadsadeghi, Safoora & Kumar, Rajeev, 2022. "Mesophilic aerobic digestion: An efficient and inexpensive biological pretreatment to improve biogas production from highly-recalcitrant pinewood," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(PE).
    10. Loha, Chanchal & Chattopadhyay, Himadri & Chatterjee, Pradip K., 2011. "Thermodynamic analysis of hydrogen rich synthetic gas generation from fluidized bed gasification of rice husk," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 4063-4071.
    11. Peters, Jens F. & Petrakopoulou, Fontina & Dufour, Javier, 2015. "Exergy analysis of synthetic biofuel production via fast pyrolysis and hydroupgrading," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 325-336.
    12. Lauer, Markus & Hansen, Jason K. & Lamers, Patrick & Thrän, Daniela, 2018. "Making money from waste: The economic viability of producing biogas and biomethane in the Idaho dairy industry," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 621-636.
    13. Venkata Ravi Sankar Cheela & Michele John & Wahidul K. Biswas & Brajesh Dubey, 2021. "Environmental Impact Evaluation of Current Municipal Solid Waste Treatments in India Using Life Cycle Assessment," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-23, May.
    14. Stephen Tangwe & Patrick Mukumba & Golden Makaka, 2022. "Comparison of the Prediction Accuracy of Total Viable Bacteria Counts in a Batch Balloon Digester Charged with Cow Manure: Multiple Linear Regression and Non-Linear Regression Models," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(19), pages 1-23, October.
    15. Carmen Callao & M. Pilar Latorre & Margarita Martinez-Núñez, 2021. "Understanding Hazardous Waste Exports for Disposal in Europe: A Contribution to Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-14, August.
    16. Li, Sheng & Jin, Hongguang & Gao, Lin, 2013. "Cogeneration of substitute natural gas and power from coal by moderate recycle of the chemical unconverted gas," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 658-667.
    17. Barbera, Elena & Menegon, Silvia & Banzato, Donatella & D'Alpaos, Chiara & Bertucco, Alberto, 2019. "From biogas to biomethane: A process simulation-based techno-economic comparison of different upgrading technologies in the Italian context," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 663-673.
    18. Silverman, Rochelle E. & Flores, Robert J. & Brouwer, Jack, 2020. "Energy and economic assessment of distributed renewable gas and electricity generation in a small disadvantaged urban community," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 280(C).
    19. Tavera-Ruiz, C. & Martí-Herrero, J. & Mendieta, O. & Jaimes-Estévez, J. & Gauthier-Maradei, P. & Azimov, U. & Escalante, H. & Castro, L., 2023. "Current understanding and perspectives on anaerobic digestion in developing countries: Colombia case study," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    20. Li, Sheng & Jin, Hongguang & Gao, Lin & Zhang, Xiaosong, 2014. "Exergy analysis and the energy saving mechanism for coal to synthetic/substitute natural gas and power cogeneration system without and with CO2 capture," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 552-561.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:6:p:1066-:d:215496. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.