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Study of the sustainability of the incineration of municipal solid waste in the island of Lesvos (Master thesis)

Πετσής, Κωνσταντίνος/ Petsis, Konstantinos/ Περιβαλλοντική Μηχανική και Επιστήμη/ Environmental Engineering and Science

This thesis assesses the sustainability of municipal solid waste thermal treatment on Lesvos, focusing on greenhouse gas emissions, transport requirements and the decision between exporting residual waste to a central facility in mainland Greece and developing a smaller local treatment unit on the island. A spreadsheet-based scenario model was developed, including four recycling scenarios (10%, 16%, 35% and 55%), ship-transport scenarios and a break-even techno-economic comparison between a local solution and transport. The results show that stronger recycling decreases residual waste after recycling from 40,964.9 t/y to 20,482.5 t/y and the quantity sent to WtE from 39,122.0 to 19,561.0 t/y. The weighted input LHV is 9.28 MJ/kg and electricity generation is 0.644 MWh/t. Under the corrected CO₂eq accounting, where only fossil CO₂ from plastics is counted and biogenic CO₂ from biowaste and paper is excluded, the net WtE emission factor becomes 49.87 kg CO₂eq/t. Annual scenario emissions decrease from 2.42 t CO₂eq/y in Scenario A to 1.21 t CO₂eq/y in Scenario D. For the choice between a small local unit and transport to Athens/Attica, the local option avoids transport costs of 1.00–1.99 million €/y. Therefore, given the available data, transport to a larger central facility is the more robust planning option unless a local project can demonstrate low fixed annual cost, reliable feedstock supply and technically credible energy recovery.