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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Urban Resource Management
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frsc.2024.1432995
This article is part of the Research Topic Cleaner production and circular economy as boosters for sustainable cities View all 6 articles

Methane emissions from municipal landfill in Chandigarh, India and its economic evaluation for waste to energy generation

Provisionally accepted
Ravindra Khaiwal Ravindra Khaiwal 1*Kamalpreet Kaur Kamalpreet Kaur 2SUMAN MOR SUMAN MOR 2
  • 1 Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India
  • 2 Panjab University, Chandigarh, Chandigarh, India

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Municipal waste, containing a large proportion of organic matter, is dumped into solid waste disposal sites, which after anaerobic decomposition, releases methane (CH4). Landfill gases such as CH4 contribute significantly to global warming, while they can be used for waste to energy generation. Method: The waste samples were obtained using the quartile method and were examined in the laboratory for proximate and ultimate analysis using standard methodology. The inventory and estimation of CH4 generation were done using International Panel on Climate Change methodology, including the potential of electricity generation from the CH4 generated. Results: The results showed that the city generates around 350 TPD of waste which comprised of Plastic/ Polythene < Clothes < Paper < Wood < Organic/Vegetables < Leaves + hay + straw < Inerts < Rubber/leather < Miscellaneous, in the same order. The estimated amount of municipal waste with observed composition led to the generation of 0.34 Gg/yr of CH4. Conclusions: Depending on the efficiency of the gas energy system, 0.27 MW to 0.77 MW of electric power can be produced in Chandigarh, and that yields a financial gain of approximately 0.15 million USD. The extrapolation of these estimates for the Indian landfill's CH4 utilization offers an energy generation potential of 13 billion USD.

    Keywords: methane emissions, Municipal solid waste, Electricity generation, First-order decay, Waste-to-energy

    Received: 15 May 2024; Accepted: 25 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Khaiwal, Kaur and MOR. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ravindra Khaiwal, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India

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