ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS OF BIOGAS PLANT INTEGRATED WITH MUNICIPAL WASTE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMPrasanna Kumar L. Duvvi and Senthil Kumaar J.S.Abstract Handling and avoiding food waste are one of the major issues in many developing countries and India is no exception. Around 67 million Tons of food is wasted in India every year. Most of this food waste ends up in landfills or composting facilities. Municipal solid food waste in landfills release methane into the atmosphere and this methane acts as a potent greenhouse gas with an impact on global warming roughly 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide. Along with the soil contamination due to landfills and the methane gas released into the atmosphere, usage of fossil fuels for power generation and transportation releases Tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Average utility emission per kWh of energy generation is 0.6 Kg of carbon dioxide and 3 Kg of CO2 is released into the atmosphere for every litre of gasoline combusted. Conversion of waste food into biogas is the best alternative and rationale for the bureaucracies to adopt this process. In this report, we calculated the economic feasibility of running a biogas plant in the town of Madanapalle, located in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. Madanapalle produces 25000 tons per year of biodegradable food waste. The capital budgeting methods used to determine if it makes sense to invest funds in the Biogas plant project are the Net Present Value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR) and Pay-off period. The produced biogas is either used for generation of electricity or converted into CNG. NPV calculations are provided for an optimum use of CNG conversion percentage for earning profits. The effect of Feed-in-tariff, tipping fee and CNG conversion percentage on NPV is reported. |