Energy

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Browsing Energy by Author "Ahmed, Saeed Isa"

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    Optimal planning for landfill gas utilisation as a renewable energy source for environmental sustainability
    (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 2015) Ahmed, Saeed Isa
    The Malaysian government aims to secure 5.5 % of the total energy installed capacity from renewable energy (RE) sources by 2015 and 11 % by 2020, leading to 42.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) avoidance in 2020. Landfill gas (LFG) is one of the most promising RE sources and a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, if it is not efficiently utilised. Efficient LFG utilisation planning is therefore very important to achieve the nation’s goal and at the same time balancing the economic and environmental benefits, thus supporting the diversification of energy sources. The thesis evaluated the economic and environmental benefits of LFG in Malaysia and then developed four optimisation models (from simple to complex cases) to efficiently plan the utilisation of the biogas. Factors such as resources to be produced (such as electricity, steam), the equipment type to employ (gas engines, gas turbines, steam turbines), GHG emission reduction potentials of technologies, resources availability and several others, impose constraints to the models. The first model predicts the optimal products and equipment type. The second model, in addition to predicting optimal products and equipment type, also determined the optimal equipment size and cost and compares the performance of the current practice with the proposed one. The third and fourth models, besides possessing the capabilities of the first two models, considered multi-period and multi-grade LFG utilisation. That is, the models predict whether low, medium or high grade LFG should be utilised and gave a tim e-based profile for the economic and environmental benefits. The models were applied to Seelong landfill and Iskandar Malaysia as case studies, with positive outcomes in terms of profitability and GHG emission reduction. The models are significant beyond LFG utilisation because they contain tools, which make them generic, flexible and robust for application to other waste management options