Gross Calorific Value of Combustible Solid Waste in a Mass Burn Incineration Plant, Benin City, Nigeria

Abstract

Some solid waste incinerators burn waste that does not possess enough calorific value that justifies the installation of an energy recovery facility, this implies that a substantial amount of energy would be provided by an auxiliary burner. Hence, the presentation of this paper was to evaluate the feasibility of setting up a mass burn incinerator with energy recovery facility using the gross calorific value (GCV) of waste generated in Benin City of Nigeria which is considered as case study. Solid waste samples (wood, leather rubber, plastic, paper, textile material etc.) were collected from Benin metropolis and their GCV were determined in a laboratory using an XRY-1A digital oxygen bomb calorimeter. The average calorific value of the waste samples calculated from the experiment was 20,198.89kJ/kg, this value is higher than the 7,000kJ/kg minimum average calorific value of solid waste required for setting up an incineration plant with energy recovery.

Keywords: Incineration, Solid waste, Gross calorific value, Energy recovery