![ENERGY.GOV - Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy](https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/fancy_images/USEERE/2017/06/1394835/doe-eere-email-logo_original.png) 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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