It is of great importance to acquire methods that has a sustainable solution for treatment and disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW). The volumes are constantly increasing and improper waste management, like open dumping and landfilling, causes environmental impacts such as groundwater contamination and greenhouse gas emissions. The rationalization of developing a sustainable solution implies in an improved way of utilizing waste resources as an energy source with highest possible efficiency. MSW incineration is by far the best available way to dispose the waste. One drawback of conventional MSW incineration plants is that when the energy recovery occurs in the steam power cycle configuration, the reachable efficiency is limited due to steam parameters. The corrosive problem limits the temperature of the superheated steam from the boiler which lowers the efficiency of the system. A suitable and relatively cheap option for improving the efficiency of the steam power cycle is the implementation of a hybrid dual-fuel cycle.

This paper aims to assess the integration of an MSW incineration with a high quality fuel conversion device, in this case natural gas (NG) combustion cycle, in a hybrid cycle. The aforementioned hybrid dual-fuel configuration combines a gas turbine topping cycle (TC) and a steam turbine bottoming cycle (BC). The TC utilizes the high quality fuel NG, while the BC uses the lower quality fuel, MSW, and reaches a total power output of 50 MW.  Using a high-quality fuel in cogeneration can prove to be beneficial for improving and enhancing the overall plant profitability and efficiency while eliminating the corrosion problems with conventional MSW firing. The need for few interconnections between the different subunits in a parallel-fueled system allows for a wider range of operation modes and leaves room for service modes of the subunit. The hybrid dual-fuel cycle will be assessed for optimal cycle configuration and evaluated to how it compares to the sum of two separate single-fuel plants with optimal cycle configurations. Investigation of such aspects is a very important issue in order to be able to fully promote an implementation of hybrid combined cycle. The work presented herein also concentrates on investigating scenarios that include a full-load and part-load analysis in both condensing and combined heat and power (CHP) mode of operation.

Through simulations and evaluation of obtained data, the results strengthens the fact that the electrical efficiency of hybrid configurations increases at least with 2% in condensing mode and 1,5% in CHP mode, comparing it to the sum of two separate single-fuel units of similar scale. The simulations show increased electrical efficiencies when running the BC in part-load and the TC in full load, with a higher NG to MSW ratio. The results also indicated that it is possible to extract more power output from the cycle by operating in CHP mode, due to more energy being utilized from the input fuel.