Greenhouse effect reduction by recovering energy from waste landfills in Pakistan

Abstract

Landfills all around the world are one of the major sources that contribute towards global warming and climate change. Although landfilling should be prioritized last in the waste management hierarchy due to highest greenhouse gas emissions as compared to other waste management systems it is still very common around the world. In this study, methane emissions are estimated by applying First Order Decay model to landfills in Pakistan over the latest data available by Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency. Results demonstrate that nearly 14.18 Gg of methane is emitted from the landfills in Pakistan each year. By combusting this methane in the form of biogas collected from the landfills as a waste management scheme we can reduce greenhouse effect up to ~88%. Same percentage is observed when we apply the similar analysis over the potentially improved practice. Also, Pakistan is facing severe economic crises due to continuous increasing gap between energy demand and supply. Demand is increasing exponentially while supply is observed to remain constant over the last few years due to frozen capacity in spite of having significant renewable/alternate energy resources. Current electricity shortfall has reached up to 6000 MW. Present operational landfills in Pakistan can only contribute up to ~0.1% to cater the total deficit which does not make any significant difference but if 75% of the total waste generated today is collected and 50% of it landfilled then Pakistan has the potential to produce ~83.17 MW of power that can contribute up to 1.4% to overcome the current power shortage. The outcomes of this paper may also be applicable to other developing countries having similar resources

A comparative study of biomass resources utilization for power generation and transportation in Pakistan

“…Zuberi et al [8] determined the potential of biogas production in Pakistan from livestock and bagasse and focused on using it for power generation only while Zuberi and Ali [19] quantified the biogas potential from waste landfills in Pakistan for the same purpose. This study directly builds on the work done by Zuberi et al [8] and Zuberi and Ali [19] and presents a comparative study to utilize biogas for either power production (as of both aforementioned references) or transportation. Outcomes of this study are aimed to serve as a motivation for the think tank of Pakistan to initiate several projects and researches to exploit their huge biomass resources and lead the country towards sustainable development.…”

An Integrated Modeling Approach for Forecasting Long-Term Energy Demand in Pakistan

“…Amongst all energy resources, electricity have had received greater attention owing to fast growth in its demand [29]. The government is under considerable pressure to overcome energy crisis thereby investing in the sector and maintaining the economic growth at the same time [30]. It was until the 1980's when Pakistan was able to meet its energy demand indigenously sufficiently.…”

Paradigms on landfill mining: From dump site scavenging to ecosystem services revitalization

“…Common waste categories are: paper, soft plastics, rigid plastics, wood, textile, rubber, ferrous metals, nonferrous metals, ceramics, stones, glass and unidentified materials (the fines and the wastes that cannot be identified by visual inspection) (Hogland et al 2004, Zuberi andAli 2015).…”