Advantages of Municipal Waste Processing by Pyrolysis Compared to Fluidized Bed Combustion, Incenerator, Hydrothermal Carbonization (HTC) and Gasification

Municipal waste is always a problem everywhere, especially in big cities. With proper processing, the municipal waste should be an attractive opportunity that has great potential. Municipal waste that amounts to thousands of tons per day needs fast handling so that it does not cause problems, moreover the waste management should require cheap investment and even benefit the waste management party. The question is what is the waste processed into, in what ways and where can it be used? Let's compare waste processing with a thermal route with various existing technologies, namely fluidized bed combustion, incenerator, hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) and gasification. Why are only thermal routes compared? This is because if the biological route takes a long processing time and requires a large place. In short, the biological route is not effective in overcoming the problem of municipal waste.

Basically all the thermal technologies mentioned above can be used to process municipal waste, only how effective and how economically profitable it is the topic of discussion. It really depends on the condition of each region, for example a number of major cities in Indonesia have oversupply electricity production, so that if added to electricity production it will meaningless and not absorbed. Another factor is the investment needed for waste processing equipment, which is generally still very expensive. Based on this, a solution is needed that can be suitable for a particular region. In fluidized bed combustion technology, incenerator and gasification in general is to produce electricity, even though electricity has also been oversupplied so it is not an option.

With HTC technology will produce the main product in the form of carbon material or charcoal, but HTC equipment investment is still expensive. Well, of all the thermal route technologies, continuous pyrolysis is the best choice because it produces the main product in the form of charcoal. Charcoal with the main content of carbon can be used for fuel, especially boilers in the industry. Boilers that have been using coal even from other fossil energy such as gas and petroleum can switch to using charcoal produced from municipal waste. The use of charcoal from municipal waste will certainly reduce the use of coal in particular and fossil energy in general. And the most important thing is of course to overcome the environmental problems caused by the garbage. The continuous pyrolysis units are also not centralized in one place, but can be spread more to various locations on a medium scale, for example each location to process municipal waste with a capacity of 200 tons / day. If let's say Jakarta produces 5000 tons / day of municipal solid waste every day, 25 continuous pyrolysis units are needed. To save transportation and facilitate storage and use, the charcoal product can be made of charcoal pellets or charcoal briquettes.

With the use of continuous pyrolysis, InsyaAllah the problem of municipal waste in big cities can be overcome while providing economic benefits (read: profits) for the manager companies. While the garbage problem continues to haunt and has never been resolved to this day, so an effective and solution-oriented innovation is needed to overcome it. Jakarta is the largest city in Indonesia surrounded by many industrial estates and boilers are one of the important equipment widely used by these industries. If Jakarta's waste is processed into charcoal, it can replace the fuel for the boilers. Steam power plants can also use charcoal for their fuel, for example with cofiring.