Hydrogen as Potential Primary Energy Fuel for Municipal Solid Waste Incineration for a Sustainable Waste Management

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management has always been a challenge for the community impacting environmental sustainability. The anticipated reasons include an increase in population and prosperity. Among all the viable methods for MSW management, incineration technology is the most matured and feasible method. Incineration technology is based on combustion process of waste assisted by fossil fuels. These fuels are not only depleting with every day, but also a source environmental hazards upon burning. Current study investigates the feasibility of hydrogen as a primary combustion fuel for municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration. A vertical shaft type incinerator has been designed with the ability to operate on pure hydrogen. A pre-mixed hydrogen and oxygen fuel in the stoichiometric ratio has been fed through specially designed burners. The burners have been so designed to achieve homogenous heat distribution. To determine the working of incinerator at maximum allowable moisture content, a variety of homogeneous and heterogeneous MSWs with high moisture percentages between 60 and 90% have been tested. The maximum temperature of the incineration has been recorded to be 850°C. A high reduction in weight percent i.e., 86-94%, and loss on ignition (1.74%-6.41%) have been observed. The hydrogen-based incinerator exhibited the highest performance for homogenous paper and food waste (1kg) with 60% and 87% moisture content respectively. The energy consumption was 108Wh and 321Wh respectively and achieved 97.14% and 88.88% reduction in weight respectively. Increase in moisture content of the waste leads to decrease the performance of hydrogen based incineration system.