Bio-Drying of Biodegradable Waste for Use as Solid Fuel: A Sustainable Approach for Green Waste Management

The potential for thermal recovery of waste is increasingly gaining impetus among researchers and industries across the globe especially in many developed countries. However, in processing waste for energy recovery, the type and nature of input waste materials particularly those with high moisture content have a significant impact in determining the quality, environmental profile of the waste as well as the thermal properties of the final product. Bio-drying, as a waste to energy conversion technology, tends to reduce moisture content of waste while maintaining the energy content of the processed waste. The current study investigates the effect of input materials (biogenic and non-biogenic materials) on the energy and biogenic contents of waste material by bio-drying process. The results indicated a positive correlation between biogenic and energy contents of the input materials with some variations observed. Further analysis showed that, high proportion of food waste in the waste mix indicated a slight difference in biogenic and energy contents. Conversely, the same proportion of paper in the waste mix showed similar biogenic content with slight variation in energy content.