How can waste be turned into renewable energy?
Renewable energy helps solve the problem of increasing demand for all types of energy. In addition, turning waste into recycled energy is also an effective way to treat and recycle organic waste.
What is renewable energy?
Renewable energy is a completely clean energy source. In contrast to fossil fuels, renewable energy is generated from continuously and virtually infinitely formed sources, such as sunlight, rain, wind, and tides.
Types of renewable energy
Renewable energy is becoming a global trend because it plays a crucial role in moving towards a sustainable future. Renewable energy comes from a variety of sources, such as from the sun, wind or tides.
Solar Energy
Solar energy is a clean energy source generated from sunlight, which is harnessed and utilized through various technologies such as solar panels, heat collection systems, and solar power dispersion systems.
Wind energy
Like solar energy, wind energy has also become popular and has an important role to play in the future. Wind energy is widely used in wind power systems on land or at sea thanks to wind power through turbines.
Hydropower
It is also a completely clean energy source and is being widely used. This power source will rely on water power in fast-paced streams to set up generator turbines.
Solid waste energy
Solid waste energy is a renewable form of energy generated from the treatment of garbage such as leftover food, newspapers, bottles, plastic bags … through incineration, landfill.
Although this can cause environmental pollution and consume land space. However, they can still be partially overcome by methods such as biodegradation, emissions modification or incineration of biowaste that uses microorganisms to produce methane gas. This gas can then be used to produce electrical energy.
Geothermal energy
This type of energy is generated from the early formation of the Earth and the radioactive decay of minerals. In areas with sufficiently high geothermal gradients, this energy can be used to mine and generate electricity.
Bioenergy
Bioenergy, also known as biomass energy and derived from animals or plants, can be used directly or indirectly through combustion to generate heat.
There are also other energy sources such as tidal energy and hydrogen-fired fuel and hydrogen fuel cells. Today, hydrogen fuel is already used in hydrogen fuel cells and provides a power source for electric motors such as electric storage batteries. This clean energy source is applied to steam-powered vehicles.
Benefits of renewable energy
There are many great benefits from renewable energy sources over fossil-generated energies such as coal, oil and gas.
Large reserves, low cost
One of the important and prominent benefits of this energy is its renewability and immense reserves, as opposed to fossil-generated forms of energy such as coal, oil and gas. Therefore, we can take advantage of large volumes without spending too much money. In addition, biomass energy also has large reserves and low fuel costs.
Limiting environmental pollution
Renewable energy will help reduce emissions that negatively impact human health. This great benefit makes renewable energy a perfect solution for mitigating environmental and climate problems. In addition, it saves energy costs for households, businesses and factories.
Wide exploitability
The third advantage of renewable energy is its ability to be exploited globally. For example, solar energy can be harnessed anywhere with abundant applications such as generating heat for heating, creating hot water, or using solar power systems with solar panels to generate electricity.
How is energy generated from waste?
In the northern provinces of Vietnam, some of the garbage can be reused as RPF (fuel from old plastic and paper). This is a biofuel, so the heat source is similar to coal. The use of pellet waste as RPF can be widely used globally to replace a part of traditional fuels such as coal or oil because it is cheap but suitable for the ecological environment.
According to Ms. Yuri Takano – Chief Representative of IKE Garbage Treatment Company (Japan) in Hanoi, RPF technology has appeared in Japan for 30 years. Most waste such as fabrics, from paper to rubber, will be sold and used for recycling. However, not all components are fully recyclable and when collected will be destroyed. Therefore, RPF is the most effective waste treatment technology.
Compared to burning coal, using RPF as fuel will emit half of CO2, 90-100% of SO2 and over 95% of ash after burning. Therefore, RPF incineration can turn plastic waste into an environmentally safe combustion fuel and there is no need to extend the life cycle of batteries in landfills or in overloaded industrial incinerators.
Methods of generating renewable energy from developed countries
Recovery and recycling methods
Waste from solar panels greatly affects environmental problems because the structure contains lead, cadmium and other toxic chemicals. Therefore, the recovery of waste from solar panels has its own regulations and is clearly stipulated by the government through Decree 08/2022/ND-CP guiding the implementation of the Law on Environmental Protection 2020 that has just been issued on January 10, 2022
Waste combustion methods
This is one of the common methods used to dispose of waste in developed countries. However, waste incineration is still controversial and is only considered a temporary method in the transition to other renewable energy sources because this process can cause black smoke and emissions, air and noise pollution, affecting human health and the surrounding environment.
However, this transition requires higher cost investments, technological innovations and waste management methods, creating certain challenges.
Pyrolysis method
The difference of pyrolysis from other techniques is that the processing of various solid wastes occurs at high temperatures but without oxygen or in an inert gas environment. This means that the decomposition process requires lower temperatures and has lower emissions of pollutants unrelated to combustion.
What does the government do to encourage the efficient disposal of solid waste for renewable energy production?
Encourage the application of incineration technology to generate electricity
The method of incineration of waste generation is widely applied in many countries around the world with about 1000 factories, of which Europe accounts for 38%, Japan 24%, the US 19% and East Asia 15%. This method offers higher economic efficiency and more advantages than other waste treatment methods. It is to make use of available raw materials, reduce the area of land used for landfill and have less adverse impacts on the environment.
Promote the development of the environmental industry
With more than 15 million tons of waste each year, Vietnam is facing a serious waste disposal problem. This situation is forecast to continue to increase by more than 10% per year. However, this is also an opportunity for Vietnam to take advantage of and recycle this huge amount of waste into new renewable energy sources, while reducing pollution and protecting the environment.
Conclude
If you are interested and want to learn more about issues related to the field of Waste Treatment Technology and Renewable Energy, energy recovery from waste, solar panel waste and waste into electricity, please participate in the Industry Exhibition on waste treatment equipment and solutions, recycling technology to protect the environment – Waste and Recycling Vietnam 2023 now!
