Evaluation of Plastic Waste Management in Thailand Using Material ...

The increase of municipal incineration may be caused from the promotion of integrated
solid waste management system. This system consists of waste sorting unit, composting
unit, and RDF production unit. There will be 10-20% of RDF production from municipal
solid wastes, if the efficiency of sorting unit is high (PCD, 2012). RDF can be used as fuels
at the municipal incineration and factories. Around 20-30% of recyclable materials are
separated from sorting unit, so this percentage makes the recycling rate increases.
Thermosetting plastic wastes are the available materials to support this scenario. Only 1%
of thermosetting waste generation in MSW was assumed for this scenario. This amount of
thermosetting wastes is divided into three parts for three different disposals e.g., 10% of
municipal incineration, 10% of industrial incineration, and 37% of landfilling. The waste
separation at sources is the best method to separate only thermosetting plastic wastes at
sources, and sorted thermosetting wastes should be burnt in incinerators because they
cannot be recycled.
Although there is the waste separation scheme at sources, less thermosetting wastes are
still burnt at the incinerator because the generation rate of thermosetting rate is very low.
Thus, these wastes cannot be used as main fuels to recover energy. Moreover, promoting
the thermosetting waste separation is not successful because there are many types of
thermosetting products as well as thermoplastic products. People do not have knowledge
on plastics cannot sort thermosetting products out of thermoplastic products.
In general, most industrial wastes from factories are always burnt in the industrial
incinerators and cement kiln. It is very convenient for factories in the industrial estates to
dispose their wastes by the industrial incinerators i.e., the industrial incinerator at Bang
Poo industrial estate is the fluidized bed system, and it can burnt both of hazardous and
non-hazardous wastes. The generated heat energy is used at factories in the estate again.
Due to the limited of petroleum and coal resources, the alternative fuels are considered.
The government must be carefully consider and compare the available ways for the waste
to energy scheme because plastics are produce from petroleum resources. The consumption
of petroleum resources will increase if most of plastic wastes are recovered into crude oil
or used as fuels because these fuels are transformed into gases and air pollution after
consumption. Unlike the material recycling, it can reprocess plastics over eight times
before littering and disposal (Goodship, 2007).
From Figure 4.31, the amount of exported plastic wastes will be 0.22 million tonnes or
9.5% of municipal waste generation in 2016. A slight increase of imported will be
presented by use the same amount of imported wastes in 2010. Approximately 24%
recycling rate was assumed out of which 10% of municipal plastic wastes will be
recovered to produce crude oil in 2016. The percentage of material recycling is the same as
a scenario 1 (14%). Furthermore, the important assumption of this scenario is 30 oil
recovery plants will be built at landfill sites to increase the amount of crude oil production.
Increasing the municipal and industrial incineration capacity by 90% within 2016, the
amounts of off-gas generation from municipal and industrial incineration will be 0.21 and
2.2 million tonnes respectively, Likewise, the capacity of oil recovery production will rise
to 90% in 2016. Therefore, the amount of crude oil generation will be 0.27 million tonnes.
There will be 0.52 million tonnes of available wastes in landfill which can be used as fuels
in the cement kiln and oil recovery plants.
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