Green fuel production by coupling plastic waste oxy-combustion and PtG technologies: Economic, energy, exergy and CO2-cycle analysis

This study deals with the simulation of a waste to energy plant, with the implementation of a power to gas unit that converts the CO2 produced by the incineration of the municipal solid waste in methane. The simulation study was supported by the environmental, i.e. CO2-cycle analysis, economic and exergetic analysis. Three plant configurations were considered, in which the difference between the use of combustion air and pure oxygen as oxidant was analyzed. The work shows that a WtE plant implemented with a PtG unit is able to produce up to 1317 Nm3/h of methane with 940 kg/h of plastic waste feed, with a fuel cost for the base scenario of 5 $/MWh. Finally, in this work the energy and exergy analysis were carried on different scenarios resulting in a maximum value for energy and exergy efficiency of 36% and 26.4%, respectively. •Three plant configurations have been analyzed considering air and pure oxygen as oxidant•Energy and exergy efficiency were 36% and 26.4% for base-case scenario•Economic analysis returned a minimum fuel production cost of 5 $/MWh•The carbon footprint varied with energy mix from 0 up to 8.4 kgCO2/Nm3fuel