Linus Karlsson and Tomas Linderholm Jönsson finished their master thesis this spring. Their thesis aimed to explore the economic and environmental opportunities for waste incineration with energy recovery, also known as Waste to Energy in Chisinau.
At present, the solution to the waste situation is unmonitored landfills with smaller sorting operations. Environmentally, this is a poor solution and although there are plans for change, no specific strategy has been presented. Another important issue is Moldova's dependence on foreign produced energy. What makes the waste to energy so interesting for this region is that it contributes to an improvement in both of these issues by using the waste as fuel to reduce energy dependency.
The results of this study show that implementation of a waste incineration plant in the Chisinau energy system is economically and environmentally feasible, given the current conditions. The proposed plant is designed to annually handle 400,000 tonnes of waste, and would with the assumed waste composition deliver 560 GWh of district heat and 260 GWh of electric energy. This production provides an annual profit of 31.6 million Euro, which gives a positive net present value after the project amortization.
Compared with the city's current solution with landfills and gas turbines, the project also provides a significant environmental improvement. During the plant's design lifetime, greenhouse gas emissions are 6.8% with the assumption that only a portion of the carbon content of the waste is of fossil origin.
Thanks for your work Linus and Tomas!
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