Waste-to-Energy from Municipal Solid Wastes Report Released!

New waste-to-energy report now available!

 
ENERGY.GOV - Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Bioenergy Technologies Office 
 

August 28, 2019

Waste-to-Energy from Municipal Solid Wastes Report Released!

In the United States, municipal solid waste (MSW) is both a potentially valuable resource and often a significant disposal problem in many locations. The United States produced more than 260 million tons of MSW in 2015. This equates to roughly 4.4 pounds per day per person.1

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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), conducted an assessment of potential research and development (R&D) activities that could improve the economic viability of various municipal solid waste-to-energy options. These include: developing waste preprocessing and handling strategies to reduce feedstock variability of MSW streams; reducing operating costs and increasing revenues in existing incinerator facilities; and enhancing economic viability of existing anaerobic digestion facilities.

In the Waste-to-Energy from Municipal Solid Wastes Report, DOE identifies several R&D opportunities for cost-competitive waste-to-energy facilities: applying gasification technologies to sorted MSW to produce a syngas intermediate; lowering capital costs of next generation anaerobic digestion systems that make high-value products; converting sorted-MSW to biocrude and derivative fuels; and enhancing techno-economic viability of processes for currently unrecycled plastics.

Read more about BETO’s findings and the challenges and opportunities of MSW.

1 EPA. 2016. "Municipal Solid Waste." https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/web/html/. Accessed June 6, 2018.

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