Potency of waste to energy — Bandung city case study

As the capital of West Java Province and one of the largest cities in Indonesia, Bandung City government has a serious concern on how to deal with the generation of city waste which significantly increases year by year. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) which is not well treated, can cause many problems. Waste to Energy power plant (WTE) becomes one of attractive solutions to solve this kind of problem. To show this solution, the characteristic of MSW as fuel is analyzed in this paper to ensure that MSW is reliable to be used as fuel for WTE. However, there are several criteria for MSW as WTE fuel, especially related to the calorific value, moisture value, ash fraction, and combustible material fraction of MSW. To fulfill those requirements, co-combustion (mixing of MSW with coal) and fuel drying are proposed in this paper. Seven types of fuel (type A to G) are analyzed by adopting calorific value tests and proximate analysis. Based on the analysis results, there are four types of fuel which are reliable and do not need more additional treatments to meet the requirements. Those fuel types are fuel of type B (calorific value of 1,439.14 kcal/kg, moisture of 40.28%, combustible matter of 25.00%, and ash of 12.84%), fuel of type C (calorific value of 2,094.89 kcal/kg, moisture of 42.78%, combustible matter of 25.68%, and ash of 6.76%), fuel of type E (calorific value of 1,826.17 kcal/kg, moisture of 43.25%, combustible matter of 25.00%, and ash of 8.21%), and fuel of type G (calorific value of 1,731.50 kcal/kg, moisture of 42.64%, combustible matter of 25.00%, and ash of 9.16%). Based on this result, it can be concluded that municipal solid waste in Bandung City can be reliable (in term of moisture value, ash fraction, combustible matter, and calorific value aspects) and has a challenging potency as the fuel for WTE power plant application. Also, it will become a prospective solution to solve the waste problem in Bandung City.