REVIEWING THE SUITABILITY OF THERMAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR MALAYSIA’S SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT

Abstract

About 90% of Malaysia’s solid waste ends up in landfills. This puts a burden on the capacity of these landfills to support increasing solid waste disposal, which, when left unabated, leads to unsustainable waste management. In this review, we discussed and evaluated the use of thermal treatment to offset landfilling, which consist of technologies such as incineration, pyrolysis, and gasification. To support our arguments, we used secondary literature consisting of case studies, government policies and research studies as references. The technologies are also evaluated in terms of their capacity, efficiency, emissions, and costs associated with the construction and operation of each technology. Based on the discussions, we found that incineration provides the best thermal technology for solid waste management due to its ability to thermally decompose the country’s highly heterogeneous solid waste composition and is financially feasible in compared with pyrolysis and gasification.