ojme.01.2018.01.05

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management is a chronic environmental problem in most of the developing countries, including the Libya. The concept of Waste-to Energy (WTE) is known as one of the several technologies capable of benefiting a society, which desires to reduce fossil-fuel addiction. Currently, there is no WTE facility existing in the Libya. The MSW is collected and disposed in landfills untreated. A substantial increase in the population by 2.2 % per year over the last years coupled with urbanization and raised living standards have resulted in high generation rate of MSW. The food and plastic waste are the two main waste streams, which covers 70 % of the total MSW. The waste is highly organic (up to 72 %) in nature and food waste covers 50.6 % of it. The aim of this paper is to review the prospective WTE technologies in Libya. Three WTE scenarios were developed: complete incineration; incineration with recycling and Refused Derived Fuel (RDF) with Biomethanation. The results show that Libya has the potential to produce about 197 MW of electricity based on incineration scenario; about 57 MW based on incineration with recycling scenario; and about 76 MW based RDF with biomethanation scenario in the year 2030.