Potential depletion of fossil fuel and climate change have globally accelerated the demand in renewable and alternative energy. Most of the Southeast Asian countries have an abundance of biomass sources for the energy sector due to their agriculture-based economy and enormous forest resources. Therefore, the study aimed at highlighting an overview of biomass energy in the Southeast Asia countries to convey the environmental and economic benefits from the available biomass sources in the region. In order to achieve the aim, the study synthesized and evaluated the biomass sources, energy potential, utilization, and management in the region, based on the published research papers, review papers, and country reports. It was found that the major biomass sources in this region were fuelwood, wood residues, rice husk, rice straw, sugarcane residues, oil palm residues, and coconut residues. The total annual quantity of the biomass potential from agriculture and forest sector in the region was estimated at more than 500 million tons per year and equal to over 8000 million gigajoules of total energy potential. In order to implement the sustainable utilization of biomass sources, the study specified the barriers and challenges of biomass utilization in these countries and proposed a sustainable approach of biomass energy, by comparing the way of traditional biomass utilization.

Nowadays, drying methods for municipal solid waste quality improvement have been adopted in the developed and developing countries to valorize wastes for a renewable energy source, reduce dependency on fossil fuel and keep safer disposal at landfills. Among them, biodrying, biostabilization, thermal drying and solar drying are the most common. Drying of municipal solid waste could offer several environmental and economic benefits. Therefore, this review highlighted the drying methods for municipal solid waste quality improvement around the world and compared them based on the reduction of moisture, weight and volume of municipal solid wastes against drying temperature and time by using statistical analysis. It was observed that the drying temperature of different drying methods accounted for 115 ± 40°C for thermal drying, 59 ± 37°C for solar drying, 55 ± 15°C for biodrying and 58 ± 11°C for biostabilization. Among the drying methods, thermal drying provided the shortest drying time. The moisture reduction, weight reduction, volume reduction and heating value increase of municipal solid waste could vary with drying temperature and time. Finally, the benefits and drawbacks of different drying methods were specified, and recommendations were made for the future efficient drying.

Nowadays, waste-to-energy has become a type of renewable energy utilization that can provide environmental and economic benefits in the world. In this paper, we evaluated the quality of twelve biodegradable waste samples from Myanmar by binder laboratory heating and drying oven at 105 °C. The calculation methods of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) were used for the greenhouse gas emission estimation from waste disposal at the open dumpsites, anaerobic digestion, and waste transportation in the current situation of Myanmar. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and fossil fuel consumption of the improved biodegrade waste utilization system were estimated and both were found to be reduced. As a result, volume and weight of the biodegradable wastes with 100% moisture reduction were estimated at approximately 5 million cubic meters per year and 2600 kilotonnes per year, respectively, in 2021. The total GHG emissions in the current situation amounted to approximately 1500 and 1800 Gigagrams of CO2-eq per year in 2019 and 2021, respectively, while the total GHG emission avoidance from a sustainable approach amounted to 3500 and 4000 Gigagrams of CO2-eq per year, respectively. The study aimed at highlighting the utilization of biodegradable wastes as a clean energy source in developing countries.

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