Municipal Solid Waste Energy

Due to environmental issue and depletion of fossil fuel resources, every country is trying to shift to renewable energy sources to obtain considerable amount of power. Out of various renewable energy options available, solar source of energy is a promising one. But unavailability of this energy round the clock, power obtained from municipal solid waste (MSW) is a promising option for smart cities, which many countries have already started to use, and energy from MSW is renewable in nature. Since MSWs are inevitable to generate, these can be utilized through a systematic procedure to generate power; otherwise it would have been dumped as landfill, producing harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) methane (CH 4 ), which is much more dangerous than carbon dioxide. There are various waste to energy technologies (WTE), out of which incineration, pyrolysis, gasification, anaerobic digestion, landfill with gas capture and microbial fuel cell are established methods. Smart cities should explore one or multiple of these options to generate renewable energy and implement it through integrated solid waste management system (ISWM-S), which involves waste segregation, collection, transportation, and processing of biodegradable waste to energy.