Prospects of electricity generation from municipal solid waste of Dhaka city

Dhaka the capital city of Bangladesh has around 12 million people generating around 5000 tons of municipal solid waste per day. Presently there are three existing sites for disposal of waste of Dhaka city. These are Matuail, Mmirpur and Lalbagh. The largest damping area is in Matuail where 88% of the solid waste of Dhaka city is being dumped. As these damping areas are being filled-up, Dhaka city corporation (DCC) has selected three more areas for the solid waste disposal. The life of the people living around the damping areas has become intolerable due to pungent smell originating from the existing sites. The electricity demanded for Dhaka city alone is around 400-430 MW. Considering the quality and moisture contents of the municipal solid waste (MSW) of Dhaka city around 100 MW of electricity can be produced from the municipal solid waste which may reduce the burden on fast depleting non-renewable sources of energy and at the same time reduce the damping sites. In this paper the prospect of electricity generation by installation of combusting plants for Dhaka city has been studied by considering the quality of the waste in terms of combustibility and moisture.