REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Population vs. Garbage Economic growth produces prosperity as well as garbage.

The faster the economy grows, the more its people consume, and the more garbage they generate. When economic growth is sustained over a long period of time, garbage starts to pile up at a faster pace. Economic growth is not the only culprit to the growing piles of garbage we see in big cities. Urbanisation and population growth are the other major partners in this crime. Based on the Quantitative Environmental Learning Project of Oregon State Department of Environmental Quality, Solid Waste Program, population size is most likely the dominant variable in waste disposal, and the graph (Annex A) supports this assumption, showing a strong positive correlation between population and solid waste disposed in 1998. The relationship between people and waste disposed is linear, with a very high correlation coefficient.
Clearly, efforts at collection, management and disposal of municipal waste have not picked up at the same pace as the three main contributors to the humongous piles of garbage amidst us. Fundamental shift towards WTE Generally, the greater the economic prosperity and the higher percentage of urban population, the greater the amount of solid waste produced. According to recent estimates, the rapid increase in population coupled with changing lifestyle and

consumption patterns is expected to result in an exponential increase in global waste generation of up to 18 billion tonnes by year 2020. Waste-to-Energy is the use of modern combustion and biochemical technologies to recover energy, usually in the form of electricity and steam, from urban wastes. These new technologies can reduce the volume of the original waste by 90%, depending upon composition and use of outputs. The main categories of waste-to-energy technologies are physical technologies, which process waste to make it more useful as fuel; thermal technologies, which can yield heat, fuel oil, or syngas from both organic and inorganic wastes; and biological technologies, in which bacterial fermentation is used to digest organic wastes to yield fuel. Reduction in the volume and mass of solid waste is a crucial issue especially in the light of limited availability of final disposal sites in many parts of the world. The worlds view of waste has changed dramatically in recent years and it is now seen as a resource to feed the ever-growing demand for energy. The growing use of waste-to-energy as a method to dispose solid and liquid wastes and generate power has greatly reduced environmental impacts of municipal solid waste management, including emissions of greenhouse gases. The global energy market is witnessing a shift toward waste to energy technologies due to growing energy demands worldwide, the rapid depletion of conventional sources of energy, and concerns over environmental pollution from conventional energy sources. Waste-to-energy technologies can address a host of environmental issues, such as land use and pollution from landfills, and increasing reliance on fossil fuels. In many countries, the availability of landfill capacity has been steadily decreasing due to regulatory, planning and environmental permitting constraints. As a result, new

approaches to waste management are rapidly being written into public and institutional policies at local, regional and national levels. An increase in the quantity of waste generated, coupled with the need for proper means of waste disposal as well as widespread adoption of technology and better collection efficiency of municipal solid waste offers significant growth opportunities in waste-toenergy market. As WTE facilities are increasingly becoming profitable cash generators in their own right, private sector companies and investors have been increasingly taking a greater stake in this industry. Private participants in developing countries have shown considerable interest in projects to generate power from MSW, and several of them are operational and using a diverse range of technologies, despite the lack of subsidies and support from the government and municipal authorities. This shift toward WTE shows the preference to energy recovery than land filling, or incineration without energy recovery. In the 2008 EU Waste Framework Directive, the five stages of the waste hierarchy are introduced as (1) waste prevention, (2) reuse, (3) material recycling, (4) other recycling e.g. energy recovery and finally disposal (Annex B). Global WTE Development During the 2001-2007 period, the WTE capacity increased by about four million metric tons per annum. Japan and China built several plants that were based on direct smelting or on fluidized bed combustion of solid waste. In China there are about 50 WTE plants. Japan is the largest user in thermal treatment of MSW in the world with 40 million tons. Some of the newest plants use stoker technology and others use the advanced oxygen enrichment technology.

There are also over one hundred thermal treatment plants using relatively novel processes such as direct smelting, the Ebara fluidization process and the Thermo- select -JFE gasification and melting technology process. In Patras, Greece, a Greek company just finished testing a system that shows potential. It generates 25kwatts of electricity and 25kwatts of heat from waste water. In India its first energy bio-science center was developed to reduce the countrys green house gases and its dependency on fossil fuel. Biofuel Energy Corporation of Denver, CO, opened two new biofuel plants in Wood River, NE, and Fairmont, MN, in July 2008. These plants use distillation to make ethanol for use in motor vehicles and other engines. Both plants are currently reported to be working at over 90% capacity. Fulcrum BioEnergy incorporated located in Pleasanton, CA, is currently building a WTE plant near Reno, NV. The plant is scheduled to open in early 2010 under the name of Sierra BioFuels plant. BioEnergy incorporated predicts that the plant will produce approximately 10.5 million gallons per year of ethanol from nearly 90,000 tons per year of MSW.(Biofuels News). Waste to energy technology includes fermentation, which can take biomass and create ethanol, using waste cellulosic or organic material. In the fermentation process, the sugar in the waste is changed to carbon dioxide and alcohol, in the same general process that is used to make wine. Normally fermentation occurs with no air present. Esterification can also be done using waste to energy technologies, and the result of this process is biodiesel. The cost effectiveness of esterification will depend on the feedstock being used, and all the other

relevant factors such as transportation distance, amount of oil present in the feedstock, and others. Gasification and pyrolysis by now can reach gross thermal conversion efficiencies (fuel to gas) up to 75%, however a complete combustion is superior in terms of fuel conversion efficiency. Some pyrolysis processes need an outside heat source which may be supplied by the gasification process, making the combined process selfsustaining. Performance Report Sweden is widely considered a waste-to-energy (WTE) success story. International comparisons show that Sweden is the global leader in recovering energy from waste (Annex C). In 2009, 49 percent of all household waste, or 232.6 kg per person was converted into energy. WTE boosted in the Philippines

It cannot be denied that the emerging popularity of Waste to Energy projects has reached every corner of the globe. Today, several Philippine cities and municipalities, in partnership with private companies advocating green technology, are engaged in transforming garbage into energy. Pampanga is setting up a $63-million waste-to-power facility, with local and foreign companies, to convert garbage into electricity, making use of revolutionary turbines. At least 800 metric tons of garbage a day will go through combustion to generate 22 megawatts of electricity, to energize 110,000 homes.

An integrated waste-to-energy technology projects used in Germany for 30 years was recently launched here in an effort to address the garbage problem in Tarlac City. The city government entered into agreement with Mackay Green Energy Inc. (MGEI), the firm which earlier signed the same agreement with Pampanga.
MGEIs patented technology enables raw waste to be classified into component parts, recyclables and refuse derived fuel. The materials are then recovered and purified for sale. The recovered fuel is then used to produce renewable energy.

In partnership with a multinational firm, Laguna operated the first landfill gas power plant in San Pedro early this year to help meet the growing energy needs while reducing the emissions of methane, a harmful greenhouse gas. The new plant produces more than four megawatts of electricity for sale to the local grid. The Naga City, assisted by a Korea-based company, is addressing garbage disposal with a waste-to-energy facility that generates low-priced electricity being made available to local electric cooperatives and power distribution utilities. The facility converts solid waste to electric energy through melting-gasification, the first to be introduced in the Philippines. Pagadian City and four other municipalities San Miguel, Guipos, Tukuran, and Aurora in Zamboanga Del Sur signed an agreement with a private firm for a 25-year public-private partnership to operate a waste-to-energy facility that will convert solid waste into renewable energy. The project will install a waste thermal gasification that complies with Ecological Solid Waste Management Act and Clean Air Act.