The waste-to-energy framework for integrated multi-waste utilization: Waste cooking oil, waste lubricating oil, and waste plastics

Energy generation by wastes is considered one method of waste management that has the benefit of energy recovery. From the waste-to-energy point of view, waste cooking oil, waste lubricating oil, and waste plastics have been considered good candidates for feedstocks for energy conversion due to their high heating values. Compared to the independent management of these three wastes, the idea of co-processing them in integration is expected to gain more benefit. The economies of scale and the synergy of co-processing these wastes results in higher quality and higher yield of the end products. In this study, we use cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the integrated management scenario of collecting the three wastes and converting them to energy. We report the total heat of combustion of pyrolytic oil at the maximum and minimum conversion rates, and conduct a sensitivity analysis in which the parameters of an increase of the electricity cost for operating the process and increase of the feedstock transportation cost are tested. We evaluate the effects of economy of scale in the case of integrated waste management. We compare four cases of waste-to-energy conversion with the business as usual (BAU) scenario, and our results show that the integrated co-processing of waste cooking oil, waste lubricating oil, and waste plastics is the most profitable from the viewpoints of energy yield and economics. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.