Green conversion of municipal solid wastes into fuels and chemicals

Abstract

Society is facing a serious challenge for the effective management of the increasing amount of produced municipal solid wastes. The accumulated waste has caused a series of environmental problems such as uncontrolled release of greenhouse gases. Moreover, the increasing amount has resulted in a shortage of areas available for waste disposal, resulting in a non-sustainable waste management. These problems led to serious public concerns which in turn resulted in political actions aiming to reduce the amount of the waste ending in the environment. These actions aim to promote sustainable waste management solutions. The main objective of these policies is to promote recycling of municipal solid waste and also the conversion of waste to energy and valuable chemicals. These conversions can be performed by using either biological (e.g. anaerobic digestion) or thermochemical processes (e.g. pyrolysis). The research efforts during the last years have been fruitful and many publications demonstrate the effective conversation of municipal solid waste to energy and chemicals. These processes are discussed in the current review article together with the change of waste policy that was implemented in EU during the last years.