Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Techno-economic analysis of municipal solid waste gasication

for electricity generation in Brazil
Fbio Codignole Luz a, Mateus Henrique Rocha b,, Electo Eduardo Silva Lora b, Osvaldo Jos Venturini b,
Rubenildo Vieira Andrade b, Marcio Montagnana Vicente Leme b, Oscar Almazn del Olmo c
a

Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via Del Politcnico 1, 00133 Rome, Italy
NEST Excellence Group in Thermal Power and Distributed Generation, Institute of Mechanical Engineering, Federal University of Itajub, Av. BPS 1303, Itajub,
Minas Gerais State CEP: 37500-903, Brazil
c
ICIDCA Instituto Cubano de Investigaciones de los Derivados de la Caa de Azcar, Via Blanca y Carretera Central 804, San Miguel Del Padrn, A.P. 4036, La Habana, Cuba
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 27 February 2015
Accepted 25 June 2015

Keywords:
Municipal solid waste
Gasication
Synthesis gas
Techno-economic analysis
Waste-to-energy
Renewable energy

a b s t r a c t
The key objective of this paper is to analyze the techno-economic feasibility of this alternative for the
Brazilian municipalities, classied according to population subgroups, using this parameter as a basis
for the calculation of the municipal solid waste generated, the project costs and revenues. Different
expenses were taken into consideration, like equipments and installation costs, operation and maintenance costs and the interest rate of the investment. In relation to revenues, they come from of the sale
of electricity, the incomes of the recyclable materials, the fees paid by the Brazilian municipalities for
the disposal of municipal solid waste in sanitary landlls and incomes by the carbon credits. An analysis
of each population subgroup, combining three different economical scenarios was done, with an annual
rate of interests of 10.58% for Scenario 1, 7.5% for Scenario 2 and 15% for Scenario 3. The economic feasibility was evaluated using as economic indicators the net present value and the internal rate of return.
The net present value was positive for the municipalities with more than 60,714 inhabitants for the
Scenario 1, 34,203 for Scenario 2 and 259,845 for Scenario 3. A hypothetic gasication plant is capable
to generate 905 kW/ton municipal solid waste for a population of 60,714 inhabitants (Scenario 1),
794 kW/ton municipal solid waste for a population of 34,203 inhabitants (Scenario 2) and
1065 kW/ton municipal solid waste for a population of 259,845 inhabitants (Scenario 3). It is concluded
that the economic feasibility increases with the installation of bigger units, showing a positive scale up
gains, therefore as higher the capacity of the installation lower the specic costs and higher are the
benets.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Growing problems of the treatment and disposal of agricultural
wastes, industrial wastes and Municipal Solid Wastes (MSW), crescent concerns for human and environmental well-being and dwindling reserves of fossil fuels, have led to research into the potential
of utilizing appropriate technologies to recover energy and useful
by-products from domestic and industrial solid wastes [1].
However, to determine the optimum route of biofuels and electricity production [2] and wastes conversion into energy should be
carried out an analysis of the environmental impact assessment
[3,4].

Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: caiana23@yahoo.com.br (F.C. Luz), mateus0@yahoo.com.br
(M.H. Rocha), electo@unifei.edu.br (E.E.S. Lora).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2015.06.074
0196-8904/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

MSW landlls represent the dominant option for waste disposal

in many parts of the world. In general, the comparatively high
costs of treatment and disposal alternatives are a major reason
for the reliance on MSW landlls [5]. Nevertheless, even some
highly industrialized countries largely depend on landlling. It
has been pointed out the spectacular increase of the amount of
MSW that must be treated and disposed, that currently, it is
becoming the main issue of MSW management. In the future the
quantity of MSW will be much higher than today [6].
Brazil is the 7th world economy and the biggest country in Latin
America, its population (204 million inhabitants) generates more
than 208,000 tons MSW/day. About 70% of the municipalities have
less than 20 thousand inhabitants, in contrast to the 15 largest
metropolitan regions that have 37% of the population, corresponding to 72 million inhabitants. The average MSW per capita generation was 1.15 kg MSW/person/day. The collection of MSW from

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F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

Nomenclature
Abbreviations
CCE
Carbon Conversion Efciency
CCEE
Chamber for Commercialization of Electrical Energy
CEMPRE Brazilian Business Commitment for Recycling
CGC
Cold Gas Cleaning
CGE
Cold Gas Efciency
CUF
Capacity Utilization Factor
FGTS
Guarantee Fund for Length of Service
HGC
Hot Gas Cleaning
HHV
Higher Heating Value
IC
Installation Costs
ICE
Internal Combustion Engine
INSS
National Social Security Institute
LFG
Landll Gas
LHV
Lower Heating Value
MSW
Municipal Solid Waste
NPSW
National Policy on Solid Waste
NPV
Net Present Value
O&M
Operation and Maintenance
RDF
Refuse Derived Fuel
SELIC
Settlement and Custody Rate
SOFC
Solid Oxide Fuel Cell
SRF
Solid Recovered Fuel
Syngas Synthesis Gas
WTB
Waste Treatment Bill
WtE
Waste-to-Energy
Latin symbols
C
costs ($)
CF
cash ow ($)
CUF
Capacity Utilization Factor ()
E
Expenditures ($)
i
discount rate (%)
IRR
Internal Rate of Return ($)

homes has encompassed 98% of the urban population and 80% of

the population of the whole country [7]. The mean costs of the
MSW disposal in landlls ranges from $ 8.80/ton (in the landlls
managed by the municipality) to $ 35.10/ton (in private landlls),
these costs are lower than the ones of other technologies presently
in use in the country and do not encourage the investment in such
technologies [8].
Only recently Brazil has implemented its rst policy instrument
to manage the MSW, the Federal Law N 12.305/2010 [9], establishing the National Policy on Solid Waste (NPSW), as regulated
by Decree N 7.404/2010 [10], which provides the principles, goals
and instruments for the management of solid waste, including the
responsibilities of producers and the local governments, the guide
to the management of hazardous waste and the economic instruments to be applied for all the Brazilian municipalities for the dispose of their wastes in a safety way. The objective of the law is to
get an integrated management of MSW, the reutilization and recycling of solid waste, including energy recovery systems [11].
There are two available technological routes for the energy
recovery from MSW: biochemical and thermochemical. The biochemical route comprises the recovery of Landll Gas (LFG) and
its utilization as fuel in different type of power plants, such as
gas turbine cycle, steam cycle, combined cycle, Internal
Combustion Engine (ICE), Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) [12], also
the anaerobic digestion of MSW organic fraction, to generate

m
MRA
N
NPV
P
Q
R
t

mass of waste
Minimum Rate of Attractiveness
number ()
Net Present Value ($)
power (kW)
thermal energy (kWth)
Revenues ($)
lifetime of investment (years)

Greek symbols
g
efciency (%)
Subscripts
atp
available thermal power
d.b.
dry basis
e
electrical energy
ecp
electric consumption of the process
ic
installation costs
ie
installed electrical power
lc
labor charges
m
maintenance costs
meq
maintenance costs of equipments
nsp
specic net electrical power
O
operation
ot
operation time
O&M
operation and maintenance costs
sal
salary
sne
specic net efciency
SRF
Solid Recovered Fuel
syn
syngas
t
total
tdw
total of dry waste
th
thermal energy
w
workers
wf
workforce costs

biogas to be burned in the same type of power plants that have

been related previously [13] and the thermochemical route that
is the main point of this paper.
In the present paper, the attention is focused over the MSW
energy recovery through thermochemical conversion technology;
these forms of MSW management have more benets than the
landll disposal. Thermal treatment plants can in fact convert the
energy value of MSW into different forms of energy, such as electricity and process heat [14]. The main available thermochemical
conversion processes, for MSW energy recovery, are: incineration
(direct combustion), pyrolysis and gasication. In addition to the
individual methods, combinations of these processes with other
treatments are possible, for example, plasma gasication, melting,
distillation, etc. [15].
Gasication of MSW is also a very appealing technology, but there
are only a few demonstration-scale projects in the world [16].
Gasication is a partial oxidation at elevated temperature (600
1700 C) that converts organic compounds in a Synthesis Gas (syngas), consisting mainly of CO, H2, small amount of CH4, minor quantities of different hydrocarbons (tars), inorganic impurities (H2S, HCl,
NH3, HCN, HF, alkalis) and particulates [17]. A gasier can use air,
O2, steam, CO2 or a mixture of all these as gasication uids. Air gasication produces a syngas with small Lower Heating Value (LHV)
ranging from 4.0 to 6.0 MJ/Nm3, while O2 gasication produces a syngas with a medium LHV ranging from 10.0 to 20.0 MJ/Nm3 [18].

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F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

Table 1
Number of the Brazilian municipalities, the population range of the subgroup, the average population of the band and daily average MSW generation (adapted from [24,25]).
Subgroup

Subgroup population range (people)

Average population (people)

Number of municipalities (cities)

Average MSW generation (ton MSW/day)

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O

8055000
500110,000
10,00120,000
20,00130,000
30,00140,000
40,00150,000
50,00175,000
75,001100,000
100,001150,000
150,001200,000
200,001350,000
350,001500,000
500,001750,000
750,0011,000,000
Over 1,000,000

3362
7048
14,093
24,110
34,203
44,371
60,714
85,306
117,515
173,231
259,845
411,891
597,139
844,251
2,677,360

1301
1212
1401
581
311
151
220
105
106
44
70
25
15
8
15

4.10
8.60
17.19
29.41
41.73
54.13
74.07
104.07
143.37
211.34
317.01
502.51
728.51
1029.90
3266.40

Table 2
Typical average gravimetric composition of the MSW in Brazil without any type of
pretreatment (adapted from [5,7,8]).
Components

Typical average percentage (% dry

basis)

Food waste
Paper and cardboard
Plastics
Metals and others
Glass
Wood and yard waste
Textiles
Rubber, foam and leather
Construction and demolition
wastes

52.6
15.0
13.5
2.9
2.4
4.3
2.7
2.8
3.8

The syngas could be combusted as a fuel gas in a conventional

burner, to generated heat (2040% efciency) or can be used for
electricity generation, in a conventional Rankine Cycle (1728%),
in a gas turbine (2433%), in an ICE (2537%), in a SOFC (41
60%) [19]. It is evident that the syngas is easier to handle (and to
burn) than a solid waste, which makes the gasication a most
promising candidate to emerge as the advanced thermal treatment
in the near future, for both, the unsorted residual dry fraction and
that produced from the sorted fraction, after mechanical treatment, namely Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) [20].
The main advantages of MSW gasication are: application to
small/medium scales; sharp reduction of the emissions of some
pollutants as dioxins, furans and NOx and the possibility of the utilization of the syngas in high efciency thermal devices (ICE and
gas turbines or for biofuels synthesis) [21].
The application of MSW gasication thought thermal plasma is
a new technology for waste treatment and management. The high
energy densities and temperature that characterizes plasma processes allows to achieve high heat and reactant transfer rates,
reduces the size of the installation for a given waste throughput
and to melt residual materials, which increases the overall waste
volume reduction [22]. However, a major drawback of the thermal
plasma gasication of MSW is related with the lower efciency of
the process and the huge electricity consumption, that could be
produced from the waste to be treated [23].
The key objective of this work is to perform the economic analysis of energy recovery, through gasication of MSW in Brazil,
without proposing substantial modications to MSW collection.
In the present paper an assessment of the economic feasibility of
the MSW gasication facilities installation for electricity generation using the produced syngas in a spark ignition reciprocating

ICE is carried out. The study focuses in providing an economic

assessment, with sensitivity analysis of the value of fees paid by
the Brazilian municipalities to the disposal of MSW in sanitary
landlls in three different economic scenarios in Brazil.
2. Methodology
2.1. Description of the scenarios
Of the 191 million people who lived in Brazil in 2010, the
majority (105 million or 54.75%) lived in municipalities of more
than 100,000 inhabitants [24]. The total population of Brazil is projected to be 239 million inhabitants in 2030, with 210 million living in urban areas (87.8%) [24]. In respect to sanitation, 5540 of
the 5570 Brazilian municipalities, regularly collected MSW in
2010. However, 4584 municipalities disposed the MSW in the soil
(a fraction which include any form of inadequate disposal) and
only 936 municipalities treated the MSW, also it must be stressed
that only 16.8% of the municipalities treat and dispose the MSW
properly with recycling and energy recovery [25].
The population of the Brazilian municipalities varies from 805
inhabitants in the smallest ones, to more than 11 millions in the
biggest. Considering that it is impossible to project and evaluate
the economic feasibility of the installation of gasication facilities,
in each one of the 5570 Brazilian municipalities sized to gasify the
total MSW produced daily, in this paper it was convenient to establish population subgroups or bands. To simplify the analysis, the
total population was divided and clustered into fteen subgroups
(from A to O) for the economic assessment analysis, as shown in
Table 1.
In each subgroup, the study was conducted over hypothetical
cases, according to the number of inhabitants served by the system
and with a corresponding MSW production rate. Around 80% of the
Brazilian municipalities have less than 30,000 inhabitants (subgroups AD); but only 24.5% of the Brazilians live in these municipalities; 75.5% of the Brazilians live in 20% of the remaining
municipalities (subgroups EO). The most populated Brazilian
municipalities, 20% of the total (subgroups EO) and produce 75%
of the total Brazilian MSW.
2.2. Physical composition, chemical properties and energy content of
MSW
The MSW composition fraction is divided into two main categories: organics (food residue, wood waste, paper, textiles, rubber
and plastic) and inorganics (ash, tiles, glass, metals and other inert
materials). Inorganics can be regarded as inert materials that do

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F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

Fig. 1. Process ow sheet of the energy recovery from MSW.

Table 3
Typical average proximate and ultimate analysis of the SRF after mechanical
treatment (Adapted from [31,35]).
Parameter

Symbol/unit

Average (% as received)

Proximate analysis
Fixed carbon
Volatiles
Moisture
Ashes

FC
V
W
A

5.08
74.07
6.52
14.33

Ultimate analysis
Carbon
Hydrogen
Nitrogen
Sulfur
Chlorine
Oxygen

C
H
N
S
Cl
O

49.7
7.2
0.8
0.4
0.3
41.6

Caloric value
LHV
HHV

MJ/kg
MJ/kg

19.63
23.18

not impact on thermochemical reactions [26]. The typical average

physical composition of the MSW generated in Brazil without any
type of pretreatment is shown in Table 2. The mean availability of
MSW (without the recyclables) varies from 3 to 30 tons/day. In this
study the possible differences in the composition of the MSW of
big cities and small towns are not considered, but, in some cases,
it occurs.
In this paper it was considered that all the plastics, glasses and
metals have been previously separated from the MSW, it is that
13.5% of plastics, 2.4% of glasses and 2.9% of metals were separated
from the MSW before the treatment for recycling, in accordance
with the NPSW [27]. It was considered that all the paper and cardboard in MSW (15%) is contaminated and it will be used together
with the organic matter for the production of the Solid
Recovered Fuel (SRF).

Treatment of MSW output fractions, intended as secondary

fuels, fall into the category of waste derived fuel, also referred to
as solid waste fuels, secondary fuels, substitute fuels, or alternative
fuels. In the absence of a legal denition or universally accepted
term, the two most established terms relevant to thermally recoverable waste fractions are RDF and SRF. Conventionally, RDF refers
to a combustible, of high caloric value waste fraction produced by
the mechanical treatment of MSW [28].
RDF is the fuel produced from MSW that has undergone processing, i.e., separation of recyclables and non-combustible materials, shredding, size reduction and briquetting and has an
input-driven specication. However, RDF could be contaminated
with heavy metals and chlorine. The non-homogeneous distribution of elements like chlorine, cadmium and mercury in waste
components, leads to varying fuel qualities in RDF. As chloride
salts, they have signicant inuence on the corrosiveness of deposits on the superheater tubes [29].
SRF is a recently introduced term, that denotes a waste derived
fuel prepared for a quality specication. SRF is derived from
non-hazardous mixed waste streams, such as MSW, commercial
or bulky waste and it consists of biogenic components (40
80 wt%) like paper, cardboard, textiles and wood. From an emission
perspective, SRFs can be considered clean fuels, because their content of heavy metals is below the limit levels. SRF is considered
more homogeneous and less contaminated, is market-driven due
to tighter quality specications [30]. Determining the chemical
composition of MSW by proximate and ultimate analysis, is a key
factor for the detailed design of the MSW gasication facility and
allows to conrm the accuracy of material and energy balances
of the MSW gasication process [31].
After estimating the chemical composition of the solid waste,
the energy content of the SRF can be determined; some equations
can be used to predict the heating value of SRF, from proximate
and ultimate analysis. The LHV is determined by subtracting the

F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337
Table 4
Main characteristics of the downdraft gasiers, main operational parameters and the
syngas composition of the SRF gasication process (adapted from [31,3640]).
Gasiers characteristics and operational
parameters

Unit

Type of gasier

Downdraft xed bed

(autothermal)
Air
kPa
101.325
C
800

0.30
2.30
Nm3/kgSRF
kg/kgSRF
1.69
mm
100.0
%
20.0
C
1200
kg/kgSRF
0.30
kW/m2
1200
MWth
15.0
kW h/kgSRF
3.5
% input
5.0
SRFLHV
%
85.0
%
75.0

Gasication agent
Gasication pressure
Gasication temperature
Equivalence Ratio (ER)
Specic volumetric air ow consumption
Specic air mass ow rate consumption
Maximum size of SRF
Maximum moisture content allowed in SRF
Ashes meting point
Specic mass ow rate of ashes generated
Specic thermal power
Maximum range of the reactor scale-up
Specic energy consumption of the process
Heat losses
Carbon Conversion Efciency (CCE)
Cold Gas Efciency (CGE)

Value

Characteristics and composition of producer syngas (downstream of gasier)

Syngas exit temperature
C
670
Syngas exit pressure
kPa
101.325
3
3.20
Specic producer syngas ow rate yield
Nm /kgSRF
3
Syngas density
kg/Nm
1.45
H2
% vold.b.
7.92
CO
% vold.b.
11.57
CH4
% vold.b.
3.90
CO2
% vold.b.
14.90
N2
% vold.b.
60.53
C2H4
% vold.b.
0.80
C2H6
% vold.b.
0.05
C2H2
% vold.b.
0.08
C6H6
% vold.b.
0.25
H2S
g/Nm3
0.45
HCl
g/Nm3
1.04
NH3
g/Nm3
2.00
3
Syngas tars
g/Nm
2.00
Ashes and particulates in the syngas
g/kgsyn
27.6
3
Syngas LHV
MJ/Nm
4.60
Syngas LHV
MJ/kgsyn
3.17

Table 5
Syngas quality requirements to be used as fuel in spark ignition reciprocating ICE for
electricity generation [43,44].
Type of contaminant

Unit

Value

Tars
Acid compounds
Particles (dust)
Particle size
H2S
Alkali metals
Heavy metals

mg/Nm3
mg/Nm3
mg/Nm3
lm
ppm (bv)
ppm (wb)
ppm (wb)

100
50
50
10
20
0.1
0.1

heat of water vaporization from the Higher Heating Value (HHV),

which is the thermodynamic heat of combustion. The LHV of the
SRF was calculated based on the Mendeliev equation (Eq. (1)) [32]:

than those that receive wastes with greater variability; therefore

it must perform the separation of plastics, glasses and metals
before the treatment for recycling, leaving only organic matter
and paper/cardboard that will constitute the SRF [33].
The designed congurations for energy recovery of MSW by
means of gasicationbased industrial facilities, can be sketched
as a combination of four sections: primary separation, mechanical
treatment, thermochemical conversion coupled with gas cleaning
section and power generation island, as shown in Fig. 1.
2.3.1. Primary separation
According to the owsheet in Fig. 1, the primary separation is
the most important stage of the pretreatment process, because it
is where the recyclables are separated, mainly the metals, that
can damage the equipments in the next stages.
After collection, the MSW is transported to the facility and discharged into a receiving hopper. The MSW is transported to the
primary separation, in which workers separate manually all potential recyclable materials, which are constituted by plastics, glasses
and non-ferrous metals, that could be commercialized. In the same
primary separation process, all the non-recyclable tailings are separated and taken to the sanitary landll. After the primary separation, the ferromagnetic materials (iron and steel) are separated by
electromagnet equipment and the remaining organic material and
paper are sent to the next section (mechanical treatment)
[15,16,27].
The separated recyclables represent 18.8% of the input,
non-recyclables tailings represent 3.8% and the remaining 77.4%
was used for the calculation of the available energy, which is the
base to size the gasication section and the size of the generators,
making possible to calculate the installed power of the proposed
facilities.
2.3.2. Mechanical treatment
The mechanical treatment process of converting SRF consists of
sorting, screening, drying, size reduction (shredding, grinding, and
chipping), briquetting and storage in order to improve the handling
characteristics and homogeneity of the material. The main benets
of SRF improved briquettes are a more homogeneous physical and
chemical compositions, lower moisture content, higher caloric
values (LHV 15.025.0 MJ/kg), lower pollutant emissions, lower
ash content and easier and more economically storage, handling
and transportation [18,34]. The typical average proximate and ultimate analysis of the SRF after mechanical treatment is shown in
Table 3.
2.3.3. Thermochemical conversion and syngas cleaning
The MSW gasication and the syngas production can be carried
out in the following types of gasication reactors: xed bed gasiers (updraft and downdraft), uidized bed gasiers (bubbling
and circulating), entrained ow gasiers (dry and slurry), rotary
kiln, moving grate or plasma gasiers [15,18,36]. Nevertheless,
xed bed gasiers are less efcient and fewer commonly deployed
for power applications, due to limitations in their operating exibility, it was considered in this study that all the gasication plants

LHV SRF 339:13  C 1029:95  H  108:85  O  S

 25:12W

2.3. Process description, technological assessment and operational

parameters
A gasication process designed for a narrow range of specic
inputs can usually be operated and performed, to a larger extent,

325

Fig. 2. Electric efciency of couple ICEelectric generator [45].

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F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

Table 6
Throughput capacity and installed electrical power of the sections (elaborated by the
authors with data from the consulted manufactures/suppliers).

Table 7
Purchase costs of the sections/equipments considered in this study (elaborated by the
authors with data from the consulted manufactures/suppliers).

Sections/equipments

Throughput capacity
(ton/h)

Electric power
consumption (kW)

Sections/equipments

Throughput capacity
(ton/h)

Installation
costs ($)

Primary separation

0.4
2.1
4.2
10.0
16.7

25.75
44.15
51.50
132.40
176.60

Primary separation

0.4
2.1
4.2
10.0
16.7

92,187
311,111
386,667
969,778
1,568,889

Mechanical treatment
(briquettes production)

0.5
0.8
1.0
1.5
2.0

44.15
55.20
66.20
80.90
99.30

Mechanical treatment
(briquettes production)

0.5
0.8
1.0
1.5
2.0

102,978
144,356
159,022
184,622
216,933

Sections/equipments

Thermal energy
generation (kWth/h)

Electric power
consumption (kW)

Sections/equipments

Thermal energy
generation (kWth/h)

Installation
costs ($)

Gasication and gas

cleaning

500
1000

3.90
5.25

Gasication and gas cleaning

500
1000

111,111
191,111

Sections/equipments

Electric power
generation (KVA//h)

Electric power
consumption (kW)

Sections/equipments

Electric power
generation (KVA//h)

Installation
costs ($)

ICEelectric generator

120
250
330

0
0
0

ICEelectric generator

120
250
330

64,814
132,756
153,680

will be the type of autothermal, xed bed reactors (downdraft gasiers), because the calculations presented here are for the
worst-case scenario.
The SRF, after mechanical treatment, is fed in batch into the
gasication and combustion zone, at the bottom of the primary
chamber, via load chamber at the top of the gasier; thereafter,
both products, gas and solids (char and ash) move down in the
downdraft gasier, a fraction of pyrolysis gas could burn above
the gasication zone. The thermal energy required for drying,
pyrolysis and gasication (autothermal gasication) is supplied
by the combustion of a fraction of the biomass char. The gasication rate is controlled by the injection of primary air and the corresponding temperature of the bed, that is kept at 700950 C, in
order to ensure that the bottom ash remains as solid and does
not melt [36,37].
The downdraft xed bed reactors (co-current), work well with a
spark ignition reciprocating ICE, as it produces a cleaner gas. A
downdraft gasier requires a shorter time (2030 min) to ignite
and bring the plant up to the working temperature, signicantly
shorter compared to the time required by an updraft gasier. The
downdraft gasiers have the highest Carbon Conversion
Efciency (CCE) of the biomass, generating small amounts of ashes
and producing a syngas with low tar content (<2.0 g/Nm3 for biomass). The Cold Gas Efciency (CGE) of the downdraft gasiers gets
near 75% with wood derived biomass [37,38].
For these reasons, the downdraft gasiers were chosen as the
thermochemical conversion equipments in this work. In this study
it was considered that the downdraft gasiers have a CGE of 75%
and CCE of 85%. The downdraft reactors considered in this work
will operate at atmospheric pressure, to gasify the SRF and air is
used as the gasication agent. The average reported values in the
literature of the main downdraft gasiers characteristics, the operational parameters and the syngas composition of the SRF gasication process are summarized in Table 4.
The gasication process produces raw syngas, containing several impurities that can cause problems during its utilization. The
produced gas cannot be used in any downstream applications,
due to equipment manufactures restriction and emission regulation. Therefore, it is compulsory to clean up the producer gas
before being fed into the downstream application. However, the

extent of cleaning depends on the selected application of the syngas [41].

Syngas must be puried from impurities, that generally include
particulate matter (particles), condensable hydrocarbons (tars),
sulfur compounds (H2S, COS, CS2, SO2, SO3, etc.), nitrogen compounds (HCN, NH3, HNO3, NO, NO2, etc.), alkali compounds (CaO,
K2O, P2O5, MgO, Na2O, etc.), halides compounds (HCl, NaCl, HF,
etc.) and trace contaminants. Generally, cleaning procedures can
be categorized as Hot Gas Cleaning (HGC) and Cold Gas Cleaning
(CGC) [42].
The HGC consists of the gas ltration at temperatures above
260 C and it can be conducted either by removing the impurities
by physical ltration under hot conditions or by converting the
impurities, especially tars to gas, at high temperatures. HGC could
includes many technologies, such as cyclones, granular lters, sand
bed lters, ceramic lters, electrostatic precipitators, fabric lters,
thermal cracking, catalytic cracking, activated carbon based absorbers, etc.; however, this technology is still under development
[41,42].
The cleaning train employs physical and mechanical methods,
which can be divided into two categories, namely dry and wet
gas cleaning. The dry gas cleaning system does not involve water
utilization and the equipment consists of cyclone, fabric lters,
sand bed lters, thermal cracking of tars, etc. In contrast, wet gas
cleaning system, requires water and the equipment involved are
wet electrostatic precipitators, wet scrubbers and wet cyclones.
Water scrubbing simultaneously cools the gas and captures the
solid particles, tars and other contaminants. The contaminant

Table 8
Percentage of increase for the cost estimation (adapted from [47]).
Activity

Percentage of increase (%)

Equipments installation
Instrumentation and control
Utilities installation
Electrical installation
Civil construction
Land area for the site
Project engineering
Others services

25.0
15.0
8.0
25.0
18.0
6.0
9.2
1.2

F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

gases such as NH3, HCl, H2S and SO2 are highly soluble in water and
they can be readily dissolved when the gas mixture
counter-currently ows through the scrubber [42,43]. Table 5
shows the syngas quality required to be used as fuel in spark ignition reciprocating ICE for electricity generation.
Due to the uncertainty in commercial readiness for HGC (ceramic lter and catalytic tar cracking), CGC was chosen as cleaning
system. The cleaning system chosen in this paper is a combination
of dry and wet cleaning processes, comprising a cyclone, fabric lter, thermal cracking and removal of tars in a wet scrubber. In
direct quench (water scrubbers) syngas cooling occurs, which also
removes y ash and tars, in the form of sludge. Finally a
oating-drum gas storage recipient, absorbs variations in the producer gas ow, when supplied to a reciprocating ICE. The syngas
composition is constantly monitored to provide guidance on the
adjustment of process parameters, to achieve consistent high quality syngas, which is subsequently used for power generation.
2.3.4. Power generation island
The power generation island consists of ICEs coupled to electric
generators. This conguration was chosen because the electrical
efciencies are high, they are relatively inexpensive, durable and
reliable. The assumed efciency for the ICEelectric generator
was based on the work of Schmitz and Koch [45], according to this
authors as high the size of the couple ICEelectric generator, higher
the efciency. Fig. 2 shows the electric efciency of generating
groups, in which the prime movers are ICE, being clear that the
engines power has a direct inuence over its efciency.
The installed electrical power (Pie) is the total capacity of the
couple ICEelectric generator, it is the nominal electric power
specied by the supplier. The specic net electric power (Pnsp) is
the available energy per ton of dry waste inputted (mtdw) after
deducting the electric consumption of the whole process (Pecp), calculated according to Eq. (2):

Pnsp

Q atp  gt
 Pecp
mtdw

where Qatp is the available thermal power of the dry waste inputted
and gt is the overall efciency of the system. Then, Eq. (3) shows
that the specic net efciency of the installation (gsne) is the amount
of net energy available for utilization in relation to the input
energy:

gsne

Pnsp
 100
Pt

where Pt is the total power of the installation. The Capacity

Utilization Factor (CUF) is dened as the ratio of the energy generated by a facility, during a given period of time, to the energy it
would have generated if it had been running at maximum capacity
for that period of time. The nominal installed CUF of power generating units is used to assess the utilization efciency of installed
capacity, for the purpose of technicalexperimental validation of
power plant designs and for analyzing the operational efciency
of currently operating plants. Table 6 shows a summary of the
throughput capacity and installed electrical power of the sections
considered in this study.
2.4. Economic evaluation and feasibility methods
All these prices are expressed in American dollars ($). In the
economic assessment three scenarios were analyzed, with different values of the Minimum Rate of Attractiveness (MRA). This
MRA value is equivalent to the Settlement and Custody Rate
(SELIC) special system average, at the time of the projection fulllments. The interest rates (MRA), for three economic scenarios analyzed were: 10.58% per year for Scenario 1, 7.5% per year for

327

Scenario 2 and 15% per year for Scenario 3. Actually, the interest
rate of 15% is the most used [46]. In each scenario, the study was
conducted for hypothetical cases, with different ranges of the subgroup population served by the system and with a corresponding
average MSW generation rates (Table 1).
A computer program was developed to analyze these scenarios,
able to evaluate the economic performance of each one. The main
goal of the program is to assist in the decision making for projects,
focused on energy recovery from MSW, based on indicators commonly used in economic feasibility analysis, such as MRA, cash
ow analysis, Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of
Return (IRR).
NPV and IRR are standardized nancial tools, to assess the profitability of projects. A scenario is an economically attractive option
if it has the highest IRR and the NPV is greater than zero. The NVP is
an indicator of how much value the project adds to the investment
and refers to the present values of all costs and associated revenues
being calculated according to Eq. (4):

NPV

t
X

CF n
n  C IC

1
i
n1

where NPV is the net present value, CFn is the annual cash ow,
being the difference between Revenues (R) and Expenditures (E),
Operation and Maintenance Costs (CO&M), i is the discount rate
(10.58% per year for Scenario 1, 7.5% per year for Scenario 2, and
15% per year for Scenario 3), CIC is the total capital costs of investment, taken as the Installation Costs (IC), and t is the lifetime of
the investment (20 years). The IRR is calculated as the discount rate,
that makes the NPV equal to $ 0.00, using the IRR computer
program.
The annual cash ow, with all the revenues and expenditures, was made considering the incomes from the commercialization of the generated electricity, the carbon credits, the
selling of recyclable materials and the credits for the Waste
Treatment Bill (WTB). The expenditures include the CIC, CO&M
and the costs of payment of interest rates of the nancing.
The IC was divided in capital costs and working capital. The
investment costs correspond to the purchase of equipments,
utility installation (water, compressed air and gas, electricity),
civil construction, automation and control, engineering projects,
land and other services. The CIC were estimated on the basis of
the costs of the main equipments (Table 7).
According to Peters and Timmerhaus [47], in the costs estimation, whether upwards or downwards, the percentage difference
of the costs should not be greater than 20%. The method of these
authors consists in an increase of value for each type of activity
required for the installation of industrial facility, considering the
costs of the project and design, land area for the site, erection, construction, equipment assembling, start-up and others. The percent
increment for all the activities are shown in Table 8, the referring
to the percent increase is applied to every activity value and it is
added up at the end value.
The working capital is the estimated value to guaranty the payment of the operation expenses, maintenance and all extra
expenses, until the installation start operations and is able to sell
its products. The working capital could be 1020% of the total
investment cost [47], for this study it was considered 10%. The
IC, for each facility proposed, correspond to the capital costs plus
the working capital.
The Operational Costs (CO) includes the expenses by wages
(labor costs) and welfare costs for workers, the costs of equipment
replacement and the overhaul and the expenses related to the
facilitys O&M are calculated according to the Eq. (5):

C O C wf  Nw

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F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

Fig. 3. Average availability of MSW and installed power of subgroups.

Fig. 4. Installed power and CUF of subgroups.

Fig. 5. Relation between CUF and overall efciency of subgroups.

F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

329

Fig. 6. Specic electrical power net generated from MSW according to the respective installed power.

Fig. 7. Population served in each evaluated subgroup by the electricity generated from gasication of MSW.

where Cwf is the cost associated with labor force (workforce) and Nw
is the number of workers; it was considered that each employee is
able to carry out the processing of 1.0 ton of waste received in the
facility. The costs of labor force (Cwf) were calculated according
the Eq. (6):

C wf C sal C lc

by Eq. (7) considering a yearly operation time (Not) of 7500 h,

dened for each facility, being equivalent of 313 days per year.
The analysis considers the installation of the facilities using equipments available in Brazil. The costs and budgets were obtained
from quotations with the machinery manufacturers/suppliers for
each equipment.

For the calculations of the costs of the wages, it was considered

that the minimum salary (Csal) in Brazil in 2012 was around
$ 276.50; for the calculations it was considered the obligations
and labor charges (Clc) of the National Social Security Institute
(INSS), adding to the thirteenth salary (13 salary) that is paid to
employees according to the Federal Law N 4090/1962 and the
8.0% related to Guarantee Fund for Length of Service (FGTS) were
included, amounting 71.5% of the whole salary.
The Maintenance Costs of Equipments (Cmeq) were given by the
suppliers, having a range of variation from $ 2044.50 to
$ 5653.50 per day of operation. Therefore, the Cm was calculated

C m C meq  Not

In relation to revenues, the selling price of the electricity was

considered at $ 66.70/MW [48]. The regulated contracts of the purchase and sale of electricity, are managed by the Chamber for
Commercialization of Electrical Energy (CCEE), which is in charge
of auction procedures. It is important to point out that the CCEE
is not a single buyer but only a manager of bilateral contracts
between generators and suppliers. According to the auctions of
the energy reserve by the CCEE, the price of the electricity went
from $ 57.80/MW to $ 71.20/MW in the year 2012 [48], this price
variation was considered for the calculation of the NPV.

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F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

Fig. 8. Installation costs and equipments costs on the basis of the installed power.

Fig. 9. Installation costs, equipments costs, and yearly O&M costs for generation plants corresponding to each population subgroup.

To calculate the revenues earned from the sale of recyclable

materials to the recyclers, the income values used were taken from
the Brazilian Business Commitment for Recycling (CEMPRE), being
$ 622.30/ton for plastics, $ 106.70/ton for glass and $ 84.50/ton for
metals [49]. The Brazilian municipalities have to pay a fee (WTB)
by weight, to the private companies, for the collection and disposal
the MSW in sanitary landlls. The WTB for the disposition of the
MSW in sanitary landlls varies from $ 17.80/ton to $ 35.60/ton
[25]. In this work it was used a mean value of $ 26.70/ton of
MSW. The cost and yield values were standardized for all the years
and an equivalence of the future values of the currency, in relation
to the value today was established.
It has been pointed out that the values will have a possible variation from $ 57.80/MW to $ 71.20/MW, for the selling price of the

electricity, from 6750 h/year to 8760 h/year, and from $ 26.70/ton

to $ 35.60/ton, for the fee paid (WTB) by the municipalities for
MSW treatment. By means of the software Crystal Ball the analysis of the probability to reach an economic feasibility, considering
the possible variations of the selling price of the electricity, the
yearly operation time and WTB for the MSW disposition in landlls
for the three different scenarios studied was carried out. The NPV
and IRR for the three different studied scenarios were the main
output obtained in the calculations.
Crystal Ball is simple and practical risk analysis and evaluation software. Crystal Ball software is the easiest way to perform
Monte Carlo simulations, within given spreadsheets. Crystal Ball
can also perform sensitivity analysis to determine the important
factors that contribute to the result [50].

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F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

Fig. 10. Specic cost of implantation of a new facility for the MSW gasication to electricity generation.

Table 9
Revenues per year obtained from the sale of the products and by-products and the amount of MSW treated.
Subgroup

Income with sale of electricity

(Million $/year)

Income with sale of recyclables

(Million $/year)

Income with WTB

(Million $/year)

Income with carbon credits

(Million $/year)

Total income
(Million $/year)

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O

8146
17,072
46,284
95,881
136,018
218,173
340,253
478,072
761,249
1,122,171
1,713,867
3,026,535
4,441,827
6,438,729
20,311,897

27,957
58,592
117,158
200,432
284,337
368,866
504,728
709,167
976,927
1,440,106
2,160,146
3,424,137
4,964,143
7,018,437
22,257,459

27,807
58,277
116,529
199,355
282,809
366,884
502,016
705,356
971,678
1,432,368
2,148,539
3,405,738
4,937,469
6,980,725
22,137,863

750
1547
3933
7883
11,183
17,393
26,683
37,491
58,748
86,601
132,018
230,694
338,190
489,122
1,543,734

64,660
135,488
283,904
503,551
714,347
971,316
1,373,680
1,930,086
2,768,602
4,081,246
6,154,570
10,087,104
14,681,629
20,927,013
66,250,953

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Technical performance of the system
The calculations carried out in this paper show that it is technically and energetically possible to produce net electrical power
from the air-blown downdraft xed bed gasication of MSW couple with spark ignition reciprocating ICEs. Whether this technology can be successfully applied for the purpose of distributed
generation in small municipalities geographically isolated depends
on economic considerations. For a gasication plant to be economically feasible, the savings from generated electricity and reduced
MSW disposal costs must offset the annualized IC and O&M costs
incurred by the plant.
Fig. 3 shows the average availability of MSW (without recyclables) and the installed power in the gasication plants. The
installed power ranges from 96 kW (subgroup A) with 3.35 tons
of MSW/day to 35,000 kW (subgroup O) with 2665 tons of
MSW/day. Fig. 3 shows the relation between the amount of available MSW for treatment and the installed power, it is clear that the
installed power does not increase in the same proportion that the
average waste, due to the CUF used in this work.
Analyzing the subgroups A and B in Fig. 3 it is possible to conclude that both have the same installed power (96 kW), however

with different CUF, as shown Fig. 4; the same happens for the subgroups C and D (180 kW), G and H (1000 kW), I and J (2000 kW), M
and N (10,000 kW). The CUF varies because of the lack of adequate
commercial equipment capacities, compatible with the needs of
each project, which drives to the use, in some cases, of oversized
equipments.
Therefore, in some cases, the installed electric supply capacities,
gasication reactors, syngas cleaning devices and mechanical
treatment equipment capacities of the factories, were oversized.
If one or more of these components is oversized, the performance
of another component in the system may be compromised. On the
other hand, the required investments of the capital costs and O&M
costs are dependent upon the size of the components.
The CUF is an important performance parameter for any power
plant, and it depends on factors such as continuous availability of
reliable quality fuel supply and plant availability. The CUF is the
ratio of actual output produced by the system, over a period, to
the potential output which could be produced if the system had
run with full capacity, over the same period. It depends on both
resources, availability and connected demand characteristics.
Higher CUF ensures maximum utilization of investments and it
reduces the idleness of resources.
Considering the availability of MSW and its quality variation
across the seasons, the CUF ranges from 0.38 (subgroup A) to 1.0

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F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

Fig. 11. Costs with the interest on capital for the implantation of the facilities.

Fig. 12. Economic assessment of the Scenario 1.

(subgroup O) over the useful lifetime of the project. If the CUF is

less than 100%, it indicates that the plant will have no operating
periods (idleness), that could be used to perform preventing maintenance, to ensure an optimum performing and larger useful life
for the plant. In general, it has been estimated that the best economics for plant life extension, result from larger plants that have
high CUF and low variable costs.
The project and design always considers 1260 h (52 days) per
year for maintenance and unforeseen interruptions. The subgroups
F, H, J, L, N and O have a high CUF and present better exploitation of
the equipments. The subgroups A, B, C, D, E, G, I, K, and M have low
CUF, without losing efciency, according to Fig. 5. The CUF is the
basis for the selection of the most adequate equipments to satisfy
the demands; on the other hand, the subgroups with a CUF
between 0.6 and 0.9 have capacity for a future expansion.
The net electrical power produced ranges from 391 kW he/ton
dry waste (subgroups A and B) to 1232 kW he/ton dry waste

(subgroup N) as shown in Fig. 6. The electric energy produced from

the MSW is a guaranteed rm energy, without seasonal interruptions, like the one generated from sugarcane bagasse in sugar
and alcohol mills and does not depend on the weather conditions,
as the hydroelectricity, wind and solar power generation that are
intermittent. Thus, electricity generation from MSW is invariable,
steady and reliable and nowadays it is increasing, considering the
large amount of waste generated, which are not efciently
managed.
The electricity generated is supplied to the grid by an integration panel, that makes an automatic synchronization with the local
grid. Fig. 7 shows that it is possible to satisfy the electrical consumption needs of 753 inhabitants (subgroup A) and 599,707
inhabitants (subgroup O), that represent more than 22% of the
average population of each subgroup. Currently, 80% of the electricity in use in Brazil (approximately 80 GW) comes from hydropower plants.

F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

333

Fig. 13. Economic assessment of the Scenario 2.

Fig. 14. Economic assessment of the Scenario 3.

The remaining 20% comes from thermal power plants, including

nuclear generation. Brazil has a population of 204 million and the
installed electricity capacity per inhabitant is approximately
0.5 kW. The total of the electricity generated from gasication of
MSW could contribute up to 3% of the whole electrical generation
based on the biomass energy matrix of Brazil.
3.2. Economic performance of the system
3.2.1. Costs and revenues
In the nancial approach, the loan is part of the entire project, it
is that the entire plant will be nanced. In this study, the loan payback was considered as constant annuities and the annual cost was
calculated by considering the loan duration, interest rate and the
expected lifetime of the systems. The capital and IC of the generation plant, for each population subgroup, are presented together
with the corresponding installed power in Fig. 8. All costs are presented before it increases, due to the interest of the loans. The cost
of installation varies from less than $ 720,906 (subgroup A) to
more than $ 30,817,393 (subgroup O). The subgroups E and H
include small variations in their costs, presenting costs that range

between $ 5.08.0 million and powers of 264 kW (subgroup E),

500 kW (subgroup F) and 1000 kW (subgroups G and H).
The costs presented in Fig. 9 are the capital costs of the installation of new facilities, based on gasication of MSW and also
the equipment costs and O&M costs, during the period of analysis.
All the subgroups show IC higher than the cost of the equipments.
The IC of the equipments is inversely proportional to the treatment
capacity of the plant. On the other hand, the O&M costs are inversely proportional to the IC; it means that at low IC, higher the
specic O&M costs are. For example, for subgroup A the IC is
$ 373,313 (50.2% of total), the equipment cost is $ 347,592 (46.7%
of total), the yearly operating cost is $ 19,051 (2.6% of total) and
the yearly maintenance cost is $ 3979 (0.5% of total). This percentage trend is kept up to the subgroup O.
Fig. 10 shows the specic cost for the implantation of new facilities of MSW gasication, to generate electricity per ton of waste
treated. It has been pointed out that the specic cost of implantation per ton of MSW is inversely proportional to the installed
capacity. If a comparison is done of Figs. 3 and 10, it is possible
to conclude that at higher installed capacity lower the specic
costs. Fig. 10 also shows the specic costs per inhabitant of the

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F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

Fig. 15. Minimum fee (WTB) for treatment of MSW to get a NPV over zero (NPV > 0).

municipality, indicating that for lower population the higher the

cost per inhabitant, with subgroups A and E having the higher costs
of implantation.
If decision makers want to select and integrate this renewable
energy technology in Brazilian cities, a viable solution for the subgroups AE could be to make associations between neighbour
municipalities, to reduce the specic costs, by making commons
investments for bigger gasication facilities, where the MSW of
two or three municipalities could be gasied together. The subgroups FO have the most attractive IC and fortunately correspond
to the places where the major part of the Brazilian population lives.
In relation to revenues, they were obtained by the commercialization of the recyclable materials, the WTB fee for the treatment
and disposition of MSW, the income by the commercialization
the generated electricity by the gasication of MSW and the
income due to of the carbon credits. Table 9 shows the revenues
of the sale of the products and by-products (electricity, recyclables,
the WTB fee and carbon credits) for each population subgroup. The
revenues have a direct relation with the amount of MSW generated
and treated per year, because when higher the input higher the
results. The amount of treated MSW per year varies from
1248 ton/year (subgroup A) to 1,022,376 ton/year (subgroup O).
The selling of the recyclables varies from $ 27,957 for subgroup
A to $ 22,257,459 for subgroup O. The gains due to that WTB fees,
for the treatment of the MSW, range from $ 27,807 (subgroup A) to
$ 22,137,863 (subgroup O), also the sale of the electricity goes from
$ 8146 (subgroup A) to $ 20,311,897 (subgroup O) and the carbon
credits range from $ 750 (subgroup A) to $ 1,543,734 (subgroup O).
It should be noted that from the subgroup A to subgroup I the
incomes obtained with the selling of the recyclables and with the
taxes of the MSW treatment (WTB) are equivalent to more than
70% of all the gains of the facility.
From subgroup J on the sales of the recyclables, the WTB and
the electricity sales are equivalent to more than 95% of all the
incomes. The electricity incomes ranges from 12% for subgroup A
to 31% for subgroup O, the recyclables incomes varies from 43%
to 33% for subgroup O, the WTB incomes ranges from 43% to 33%
for subgroup O and the carbon credits incomes varies from 2%
for subgroup A to 3% for subgroup O.

3.2.2. Economic assessment of the three analyzed scenarios

The total costs considering the interest rates for each Scenario
(1, 2 or 3) are shown in Fig. 11; the interests on the capital were
calculated for each subgroup and utilized only for the nancial
analysis, according to each scenario. The total costs, with the interest on capital of 10.58% per year for Scenario 1 range of $ 764,904
(subgroup A) to $ 32,698,226 (subgroup O), the costs with interest
of 7.5% per year for Scenario 2 range of $ 1,249,903 (subgroup A) to
$ 53,431,025 (subgroup O) and for the costs with interest of 15% for
Scenario 3 range of $ 2,195,561 (subgroup A) to $ 93,856,148 (subgroup O).
An interest rate of 10.58% per year was the basis for the calculation of the economic feasibility of Scenario 1. An economic analysis, based on the indexes of NPV an IRR, is shown in Fig. 12, being
possible to highlight that the IRR and NPV are positive in 67% of the
subgroups (FO) and negative in the remaining 23% (AE). For
Scenario 1 it is viable to install a facility for the treatment of
MSW in 67% of the subgroups, if it were applied to 67% of the subgroups it means that 14% of the Brazilian municipalities could have
its MSW treated correctly and it corresponds to 70% of all the MSW
in Brazil. The subgroup I presents a discrepancy, because the available amount of MSW for treatment, demands an installed capacity
higher than that required, the reason is the lack of compatible
equipments in the Brazilian market and low CUF (Fig. 4), the same
behavior is also valid for the other scenarios.
The interest rate of 7.5% per year was the basis of the viability of
the economic Scenario 2. The Fig. 13 shows the NPV and IRR of the
Scenario 2, pointing out that these parameters are positive in 73%
of the subgroups (EO) and negative for the others subgroups. For
Scenario 2 the viability of installing a MSW treatment plant, reach
73% of the subgroups, if it were applied to 73% of the subgroups, it
means that 20% of the Brazilian municipalities will have their MSW
properly treated, which corresponds to 75% of all Brazilian MSW.
A rate of interest of 15% per year is the basis of the economic
viability in the Scenario 3. The economic analysis of the NPV and
IRR presented in Fig. 14 shows that these parameters are positive
in 47% of the subgroups (HO) and negative the others ones (A
G and I). For Scenario 3, the installation of a plant for the treatment
is viable for 47% of the subgroups, it means that treating 47% of the

F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

335

Fig. 16. Minimum treatment fee for MSW to ensure a IRR higher than 12%.

MSW of the subgroups, only result in the 5% of the Brazilian municipalities having their MSW properly treated, which correspond to
53% of the whole Brazilian MSW.
The subgroups that cannot get an economic feasibility for this
scenario, could test the strategy of merging in municipal consortiums, looking after the possibility of a higher amount of MSW
and in this way, making viable to install a treatment facility. The
consortium seems to be an appealing alternative for small municipalities, giving the possibility to reduce the costs and increasing
the yields. MSW transport costs increase must be considered.
Another way is to establish a minimum value for the fee of MSW
treatment.
Therefore, it was carried out a sensitivity analysis, trying to nd
the minimum value of the MSW treatment, to make viable the
installation of a hypothetical MSW gasication plant, independent
of its size. The sensitivity analysis is an important tool for researching over the properties of complex systems; it represents an essential part of inverse analysis procedures, response surface modeling
or uncertainty analysis. The sensitivity analysis provides information about the contributions of individual system parameters
inputs to the system outputs.
To evaluate the relative importance of input parameters over
the projects economic results, a simple sensitivity analysis was
performed, over the main economic parameter of the model, like
the fee paid (WTB) by the Brazilian municipalities for disposal
the MSW in sanitary landlls. The economic viability of each project depends on the MSW treatment fee, to ensure a viable development to establish the implantation of a MSW facility for each
population subgroup (Fig. 15).
In Fig. 15 it is determined the minimum WTB fee for the MSW
treatment, looking to ensure its viability. The minimum treatment
tax varies from $ 213.35 (subgroup A) to $ 4.50 (subgroup K) in

Scenario 1, of $ 152.00 to $ 3.10 (subgroup I) for Scenario 2 and

$ 343.55 (subgroup A) to $ 7.58 (subgroup M) in Scenario 3.
Fig. 16 presents the minimum WTB fee value that could be
charged by the hypothetical MSW gasication plant for the correct
treatment of the MSW, to obtain a value of the IRR higher than 12%,
which is the acceptable gure. The minimum index of treatment
ranges from $ 711.15 (subgroup A) to $ 3.60 (subgroup N) in
Scenario 1, of $ 515.60 (subgroup A) to $ 3.15 (subgroup M) for
Scenario 2, of $ 1044.50 (subgroup A) to 20.00 (subgroup N) in
Scenario 3.

4. Conclusions
In this paper it has been analyzed and assessed a conguration
for MSW gasication for electricity generation, from the technical
and economical perspectives. All the MSW gasication facilities
analyzed were of the type of autothermal xed bed reactors
(downdraft gasiers). The syngas cleaning system selected in this
study was a combination of dry and wet cleaning processes composed of a cyclone, fabric lter, thermal cracking and removal of
tars in a wet scrubber. The electricity generation was performed
by an ICE coupled to electric generator.
The technical assessment focused primarily on the operating
principles: installed power, CUF, specic electrical power generation and efciencies. The economic analysis was carried out based
on the economic indicators: NPV and IRR, bringing together three
different economical scenarios, with an annual rate of interests of
10.58% for Scenario 1, 7.5% for Scenario 2 and 15% for Scenario 3.
The sensitivity analysis was also conducted, to investigate the
effects of key assumptions on the fee paid by the Brazilian municipalities for disposal the MSW, in sanitary landlls.

336

F.C. Luz et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 103 (2015) 321337

The 5570 Brazilian municipalities (204 million of inhabitants)

were divided and clustered into fteen subgroups (AO) for the
economic assessment. In each subgroup, the study was conducted
to hypothetical cases, with a number of inhabitants, served by the
system and with a corresponding MSW production rate. The costs
of equipments installation and for operation and maintenance
were taken into account, as well as the interest rate of the investment. In relation to revenues, they come from of the electricity and
the recyclable materials sales, the fee paid of the Brazilian municipalities for the disposal of MSW in sanitary landlls and the
incomes from the carbon credits.
The NPV was positive for municipalities with more than 61,000
inhabitants (Scenario 1), 35,000 inhabitants (Scenario 2) and
260,000 inhabitants (Scenario 3). A hypothetic gasication plant
with the capability to generate 905 kW/ton MSW was set for a population of 61,000 inhabitants (Scenario 1), with 794 kW/ton MSW
for a population of 35,000 inhabitants (Scenario 2) and with
1065 kW/ton MSW for a population of 260,000 inhabitants
(Scenario 3). The results show that the economic performance of
a MSW gasication facility is largely depending on its size; when
larger the plant in capacity, higher is the installed power, the
CUF, the electrical efciency and the overall economic
performance.
The economic feasibility is possible for all the population subgroups (AO), because the WTB fee paid by the Brazilian municipalities for the disposal of the MSW in sanitary landlls and the
quantity of the available MSW can be adjusted, varying the taxes
and through the association of the municipalities in consortiums
to reach the convenient amounts of MSW. Municipalities with a
population lower than 60,000 inhabitants could be clustered in
consortiums for collecting and treating the MSW, the ones with
more than 60,000 could try to install its own MSW treatment
installation.
If the MSW is treated and disposed correctly, in only one-fth of
the Brazilian municipalities, including the most populated ones,
Brazil could reach three-fourth of the whole amount of MSW generated treated in a responsible way, with the use of the energy of
the refuses and the marketing of the recyclables. The electric
energy produced from the MSW could cover more than 20% of
the needs of each subgroup that was studied. The electric energy
that is possible to generate from the MSW could represent 3% of
the whole electric energy produced in the Brazilian energetic
matrix.
However, with no incentives from governments, it is unlikely
that such plants can be actually built. Even having a positive NPV
it is not enough to ensure the convenience of the investment.
Beside the NPV value, also the IRR must be considered, along with
the required threshold protability from the investors. In the
research done in this paper, the economic indicators were calculated for 20 years of the project lifetime, for of the small and medium plant sizes. Expensive solutions, with a long payback time,
regularly require another parameters of analysis like a prot factor.
Prot factor relates the net prot, accounting for the risk of investment, to the total cost of the plant. It is calculated as a percentage
of the ratio between NPV and total investment costs.
In addition, further works are required to clarify the effect of
MSW variability on SRF quality and gasier operation parameters.
It would be useful to determine the economics for new options for
electricity generation from renewable energy sources, in a sustainable manner, this includes the MSW gasication for syngas production and its burning in an ICE coupled electric generators. MSW is a
potentially valuable, partially renewable feedstock, that has been
under utilized. Some of the technologies associated with MSW
gasication are still being developed for electricity generation.
Further technological improvements such as integration of other
technologies, as well as strategies to raise both energy conversion

efciency and plant size, may increase the plant protability. This
paper indicates the potential in the research for process
improvement.
Acknowledgements
The authors are very grateful to the nancial support provided
by the Electrical Company of Minas Gerais (CEMIG) through the
Research and Development project (R&D) ANEEL/CEMIG GT N
418, Gasication of Municipal Solid Wastes (MSW) for
Electricity Generation in Brazil, whose support is gratefully
acknowledged. We wish to thank the Brazilian National Research
and Development Council (CNPq). The Research Support
Foundation of the Minas Gerais State (FAPEMIG) and the
Coordinating Body for the Improvement of Postgraduate Studies
in Higher Education (CAPES) for the funding of R&D projects.
Also the support of graduate students and the production grants,
that allowed to accomplish the research projects whose results
are included in this paper.
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