Evaluation of Torrefied Food Waste as a Renewable Feedstock for Power Production: Techno-Economic and Environmental Insights

The present study proposes a technique to utilize food waste for energy production by torrefying it at 250℃ in inert atmosphere. An integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) is configured using different feedstock spanning from torrefied food waste to biomass and coal using O ₂ / steam as the gasifying medium. The HHV of syngas generated from TFW is found to be 11.2 MJ/kg at 900℃ at ER 0.35. The present study highlights the effect of torrefaction over raw biomass and coal using a combined cycle for power generation for an energy input of 200 MW. The sensitivity analysis of each case is studied by varying the oxidant flow, steam flow and operating temperature to determine the optimum conditions. The techno-economic analysis suggested that the cost (128.18$/MWh) is somewhat higher than the coal and biomass. This clearly suggests implementing torrefied feed over raw biomass, biomass would require subsidy by government. The net efficiency of the proposed plants are found to be 30.4%, 35.46% and 38.27% using SB, TFW and IC, respectively. Further, it can be inferred that it can possibly replace fossil fuels or can be added as a blend for value-added products generation.