Global energy demand and MSW generation are increasing as population and living quality continue to grow. Efforts are oriented towards developing and adopting sustainable solutions. Palestinian territories depend on imported energy (100% fossil fuel and 89% electricity) from Israel, and suffer from MSW accumulation environmental consequences due to improper disposal method. West Bank MSW generation rate reached 2600 ton per day (0.91 kg per capita per day) in 2019, and it increases 4% annually. Three MSW dumping sites are currently operating, namely; Zahrat Al-Finjan to serve middle and northern West Bank area (of 88% utilization rate), Al-Menia (of 9% utilization rate) to serve southern area, and one in the city of Jericho (overloaded). Palestinian government strategic plans (2017–2022) aim to reduce imported energy dependency, reduce CO₂eq emissions, and adopt sustainable solutions for MSW disposal. WTE is considered a promising solution to achieve these objectives.

This research investigates three WTE options for the West Bank, two of them assume producing electricity by incineration, which are building a plant in Zahrat Al-Finjan (1500 ton/day), or building a smaller plant in a transfer station (750 ton/day), the third option assumes waste-to-heat option for local industrial loads. To perform the study, all MSW, energy, and population data were collected and analyzed spatially. After that, considered options were analyzed from economic and environmental point of view, and different operational incentives were proposed to enhance its feasibility.

Results show that waste to heat plant is the most feasible. Unfortunately, this option is impractical due to demand unavailability. For electric generation plants in Zahrat Al-Finjan and the transfer station, MARR and plant life time were assumed 10% and 30 years, respectively. If the proposed plants will be responsible for handling MSW collection and transferring costs, NPV for it will be 25.2 and −2.63 million U.S dollars, RoR equals to 12% and 9.7%, and SPP equals to 8.5 and 11 years, respectively. While if the Palestinian government will continue taking this burden, Zahrat Al-Finjan and transfer station WtE plants NPV will be 207 and 12.5 million U.S dollars, RoR equals to 22% and 11.3%, and SPP equals to 4.6 and 9 years, LCOE equals to 0.0486 and 0.0497 $/kWh, and annual saved CO₂eq equals to 1.23 and 0.58 Mt CO₂eq, respectively.

Title

Journal of Cleaner Production

Publisher

ELSEVIER

Publisher Country

Netherlands

Indexing

Scopus

Impact Factor

7.246

Publication Type

Both (Printed and Online)

Volume

279

Year

2021

Pages

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