Page 19 - Energy from Toxic Organic Waste for Heat and Power Generation

8 Energy from Toxic Organic Waste for Heat and Power Generation

fluorescent lamps, wastes from chemical processing industries, fertilizers, etc.
The toxic waste includes pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc. The biomed-
ical waste includes used syringes, expired pharma products, human tissues,
and all sorts of items that are used for human checkup in hospitals.
As discussed above, each of the wastes is to be handled and treated ac-
cordingly to its nature of behavior. Almost all forms of wastes are handled
by the municipality. The municipal waste management is the next scenario
where they face many difficulties in handling such wastes. Most of the de-
veloped and developing countries are worried about the waste manage-
ment, as the rate of waste generation is drastically increasing with increasing
population. Each nation in the world has its own way of waste management
system.
The rate of generation of wastes is represented as kilogram per capita
per day. This rate is increasing day by day. It reported that, people with low
income are estimated to produce around 0.86 kg of municipal solid wastes
on a daily basis. Current global municipal solid waste generation levels are
approximately 1.3 billion tons per year and are expected to increase to
approximately 2.2 billion tons per year by 2025. This represents a signifi-
cant increase in per capita waste generation rates, from 1.2 to 1.42 kg per
person per day in the next 15 years. However, global averages are broad
estimates only as rates vary considerably by region, country, city, and even
within cities.
This level if goes on increasing, there will not be enough place to dump
the wastes. Hence, effective waste management strategies are to be created
and followed by the nations. Many nations have created their own strategies
in handling the wastes. This led the nations in converting the wastes into
some useful form. A variety of processes exist for waste conversions and
management like recycling, composting, land filling, and energy recovery.
In most of the developing and developed countries, the recycling process is
carried out by humans, so called scavengers. But this method will not con-
tribute much in reducing the wastes. This in turn might harm the humans
involved in it, as the variety of wastes handled by them may be hazardous.
Recycling is one of the way to reduce the waste to make valuable products.
The other method is composting where the organic wastes are subjected
to degradation and converted to compost. This is used as manure in the
cultivation of plants. This method needs place, money, and some marketing
strategies to sell them. But it does have some drawback as composting deals
with bacteria; so health-related issues will arise if it is not properly handled.
Landfilling is the other option which is followed in most of the nation.