A Waste-to-Energy Power Plant With CO₂ Sequestration

This paper assesses the technical and economic feasibility of a novel idea: Reducing the emission of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas contributing to global warming, by combusting solid wastes with industrial oxygen mixed with recirculated flue gas. The process gas, consisting mostly of carbon dioxide, would be compressed and used in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) projects. By using municipal and other organic wastes that are currently landfilled as a fuel and sequestering the carbon dioxide product of combustion underground, such a process would provide the maximum environmental advantages possible, by producing electricity renewably without emitting greenhouse gases. The results of this preliminary analysis indicate that this may be a good opportunity to reduce carbon emissions at a lower cost than other methods of carbon sequestration.