Waste-to-Energy Trends and Prospects: A Review

Abstract

Production of wastes with huge amounts represents a big problem for many countries. Also, transportation and disposal of these amounts are land and resources consumers so managing these wastes became an urgent issue recently. Waste management includes recycling, safe disposal of hazardous waste materials and using materials which have reasonable calorific value to be converted into energy. Waste to energy concept provide economical and environmental benefits and introduce a renewable energy source as well. Utilization of wastes as a renewable source of energy can achieve environmental sustainability and compensate shortage of other energy sources. Energy demand and consumption increased dramatically over the previous few years, for example the world daily consumption of natural gas and oil from 261 billion cubic feet and 85.4 million barrels in 2009 to reach about 335 billion cubic feet and 91.2 million barrels in 2013 by an increase of about 28% and 7% of natural gas and oil consumption respectively. By the end of 2015 the daily oil consumption increased by about 4.17% from that of 2013 to reach 95 million barrels so it is a must to utilize wastes for producing energy to satisfy the increasing demand. The scope of this study is to introduce and discuss the efforts done in Egypt to manage wastes for the aim of energy production as well as comparing these efforts with those of other different countries such as USA, Germany, India and China.