This document discusses a proposal to build a municipal solid waste (MSW) power plant in Shelby County. It defines MSW as trash from households and notes Americans generated 250 million tons in 2010, with 54% sent to landfills. The plant would burn 120,000 tons of Shelby County's MSW annually to power a 1.9 kW steam turbine, generating $240,000 yearly and costing $150,000 to operate. With a $10.5 million startup cost, the payback period is estimated at 43.75 years. Research included energy production potential from MSW and operating costs for power plants and Shelby County energy rates.

1. Christian Grady, Kunind, William Smith

2.  What is MSW?
 How it’s going to work?
 Our Focus?
 Calculations!
 Feasibility
 Credibility

3. Municipal solid waste is defined as trash or
garbage that is usually thrown away by
households.
Americans generated 250 million tons of
MSW in 2010.
54% of this waste was sent to landfills.

4. Figure 1: Total MSW generation in 2013

6. Figure 2. Sample MSW power plant diagram

7. Essentially, these plants burn MSW to
power steam turbines.
These turbines send electricity to the
power grid.
The products of this burning process are
water vapor and harmless ash that is used
for aggregate and metals.
The rest of this ash is disposed in landfills
but takes up 90% less space than MSW

8. Shelby County produced 120,000 tons of
MSW in 2005 (the latest available
complete data).
We used half of this value for our
calculations: 60,500 tons.
According to the IWEA, one ton of MSW
can yield 550 kWh to the grid.

9. Egenerated=(60,500 tons) x (550 kWh/ton)
=1.66x107 kWh
Power = Egenerated/time
= 1.66x107 kWh/8760 hrs
= 1900 W
Power = 1.9 kW

10. With this, we can choose a turbine.
Figure 3. A200 steam turbine diagram/description

11. Below we have both the data for power plant operating
costs and the average cost of energy in Shelby County.
Table 1. Average power plant operating expenses
Table 2. MLWG energy charge per month

12. From this data, we can calculate the
operating cost for the year:
And the amount our plant would make
every year:

13. From our research, we found a similar
plant and were able to proportionally
determine a startup cost of $10.5 million.
This allows us to estimate a payback
period:
Table 3. Final results

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15. Any Questions?