Evaluation of energy potential of municipal solid waste gasification in different regions of Iran by using a modified equilibrium thermodynamic model

Municipal solid waste is the largest waste stream around the world and has a great potential for generating synthetic gas. An improved numerical model is used based on equilibrium thermodynamics to predict the composition of the municipal solid waste gasification products. To validate the superiority of the model, the results are compared and verified against some experimental studies. The developed model is then used to study the potential of energy extraction from solid waste in Iran as a case study. For this purpose, Iran is divided into ten separate zones, and the chemical composition of the wastes in each region is determined based on the type and amount of the waste compounds. Next, the effects of some important factors such as the amount of moisture content, environmental humidity, and equivalence ratio are investigated. The results show that at the equivalence ratio of 0.3, Khuzestan and Zagros regions have the highest and the lowest heating values of the produced synthetic gas with the cold gas efficiency of 20% and 16.5%, respectively. At the equivalence ratio of 0.6, the same qualitative results are obtained; however, the mentioned values of cold gas efficiency for Khuzestan and Zagros decrease to 14.8% and 13.8%, respectively.