TY - JOUR
TI - Influence of legislative conditioned changes in waste management on economic viability of MSW-fuelled district heating system: Case study
AU - Tomić Tihomir
AU - Ćosić Boris
AU - Schneider Daniel Rolph
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2016
VL - 20
IS - 4
SP - 1105
EP - 1120
PT - Article
AB - District heating systems represents one of the ways by which the European  Union is trying to reach set goals in energy efficiency and security field.  These systems allow the use of different energy sources including local  energy sources such as waste and biomass. This paper provides economic  viability assessment of using these fuels in the district heating system.  Economic evaluation is based on regression analysis from data of existing  plants and on the locally dependent data. Some of parameters that are  dependent of local parameters are price and available fuel quantity,  therefore these values are separately modelled; biomass as a function of  location of the plant while municipal waste as a function of location and the  time changes in waste quantity and composition which depend of socio-economic  trends and legislation. This methodology is applied on the case of district  heating plants in the City of Zagreb where internal rates of return are  calculated for four considered scenarios. Results indicate that waste powered  plant can improve its profitability by co-combusting other local wastes while  economic viability is achieved by introduction of region wide waste  management system. Reducing plant capacity, based on prognosis of waste  generation, showed that these plants can be competitive with biomass plants.