Sustainable Energy Recovery from Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) using Bio-reactor Landfills for Smart City Development

Bioreactor landfill (BRLF) has become one of the imminent and promising treatment technologies of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) worldwide, mostly in emerging countries. An engineered Sanitary Landfill (SLF) is an essential disposal technology for an integrated solid waste management system (ISWMS) specially for smart city development but most of them are open dumps, especially in developing countries. Though many counties aim to “zero landfill” waste management system but this practice is an inevitable stage in closing the material cycle. Bioreactor landfill accelerates decomposition rate, enhanced shorter post-operational phase. Several bioreactor landfill techniques such as aerobic, anaerobic and hybrid BLFs are in practices and it has become important to assess the sustainability of the bioreactor landfill processes. In this present study, the current BRLF technologies are evaluated based on the literatures and environmental reports. An engineered SLF can be converted into BRLF by introducing a leachate recirculation system with efficient landfill gas (LFG) collection. However, it adds on extra pumping cost of leachate recirculation. This can be managed with a new and modified anaerobic BRLF system which enhances the decomposition without the help of leachate recirculation by incorporating waste plastics within a specified optimum limit. BRLFS can play an important role towards developing a sustainable waste management system for any country. In this present work, based on the literature outcomes a sustainable framework has been suggested which may be beneficial to the policy makers, stakeholder for accomplishment of integrated solid waste management system implementation for smart cities development.