Economic analysis and feasibility study of an organic waste managemenet [sic] management machine

Abstract

Due to the lack of regulations and strategic plans in most developing countries, municipal solid waste is usually dumped in random landfills without any sorting or recycling. Organic waste constitutes the largest fraction of municipal solid waste and offers high potentials in terms of energy return. In this regard, processing organic waste in a suitable way can result in two beneficial products, the first one is liquid wastewater which can have several usages, and the second product is organic waste biomass briquettes. For this purpose, the WasteMine initiative was founded and a unique system is designed composed of the following sections: a shredding and miniaturization section, a dewatering section and a briquetting section. A case study on Lebanon shows that if this technique is implemented at a municipal level, a total of 1108 machines would be needed in order to process the entire organic waste production of the country (1.3 million tons) where around 20 % is transformed to briquettes and the remaining to liquid water. A cost-benefit analysis conducted on the machine resulted in an NPV of -$1.68 million compared to the -$16 million NPV of the current plan. The massive improvement indicates a promising future for the project. To improve the analysis, a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was conducted using AHP-TOPSIS combined approach. The current plan was compared to WasteMine and anaerobic digestion based on several financial and environmental criteria and the results showed that WasteMine ranked as first followed by anaerobic digestion, and the least favorite was the currently implemented plan. The proposed design constitutes an important step towards a proper waste management and helps in satisfying the increasing energy demand through waste-to-energy techniques.