Comprehensive exergoeconomic analysis of a municipal solid waste digestion plant equipped with a biogas genset

Aghbashlo M 1 , Tabatabaei M 2 , Soltanian S 3 , Ghanavati H 4 , Dadak A 5

Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering of Agricultural Machinery, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran. Electronic address: maghbashlo@ut.ac.ir
  • 2 Biofuel Research Team (BRTeam), Karaj, Iran; Microbial Biotechnology Department, Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran (ABRII), Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Organization (AREEO), Karaj, Iran; Faculty of Plantation and Agrotechnology, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia. Electronic address: meisam_tabatabaei@abrii.ac.ir
  • 3 Biofuel Research Team (BRTeam), Karaj, Iran
  • 4 Biofuel Research Team (BRTeam), Karaj, Iran; Microbial Biotechnology Department, Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran (ABRII), Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Organization (AREEO), Karaj, Iran
  • 5 Department of Mechanical Engineering of Agricultural Machinery, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran
Waste Manag, 2019 Mar 15;87:485-498.
PMID: 31109549 DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2019.02.029

Abstract

A comprehensive exergoeconomic performance analysis of a municipal solid waste digestion plant integrated with a biogas genset was conducted throughout this study in order to highlight its bottlenecks for further improvements. Exergoeconomic performance parameters of each component of the plant were determined by solving exergy and cost balance equations based on Specific Exergy Costing (SPECO) approach. The analysis was conducted to reveal the cost structure of the plant based on actual operating information and economic data. The exergy unitary cost of two main products of the plant, i.e., bioelectricity and biofertilizer were determined at 26.27 and 2.27 USD/GJ, respectively. The genset showed the highest overall cost rate (101.27 USD/h) followed by digester (68.41 USD/h). Furthermore, the net bioelectricity amounted to 67.81% of the overall cost rate of the products, while this value was 32.19% for both liquid and dewatered digestates. According to the results obtained, efforts should mainly focus on enhancing the efficiency of the genset in order to boost the overall performance of the system exergoeconomically. In addition, minimizing the investment-related cost of the digester could also substantially enhance the exergoeconomic performance of the plant.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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