Analysis of a Waste-To-Energy Power Plant with CO2 Sequestration

Over the past decade there has been growing interest in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. While the United States is not a member nation of the Kyoto Protocol, several greenhouse gas emissions trading initiatives are being planned or implemented at the state level. Abroad, numerous countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol and are actively regulating the emission of greenhouse gases. This paper assesses the technical and economic feasibility of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide, the predominant greenhouse gas, by combusting solid wastes with industrial oxygen mixed with recycled carbon dioxide, thus resulting in a nearly pure CO2 product stream that will be captured, compressed and sold to Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) projects. By using municipal and other organic wastes as the feedstock and underground storage as the CO2 recipient, this scheme is positioned to provide the maximum environmental advantages possible, by producing electricity renewably and physically sequestering carbon dioxide. The preliminary analysis to be presented in this paper indicates a good opportunity to reduce carbon emissions at a lower cost than other proposed methods for carbon sequestration