PLASTIC WASTE FOR ELECTRICAL POWER GENERATION A CASE STUDY IN NIGERIA

Nigerian is currently threatened by the quantity of waste plastics in its major cities. However, waste plastics has been a menace to the Nigerian environs (land and water) majorly and contributed to flood disasters and other environmental degradation events which has led to severe health risk. In view of this, the study aims to assess the waste plastics in Nigeria for electric power generation. The study devised two strategies (incentive-based approach, and the Extended Producer’s Responsibility (EPR)) for the collection of waste plastics from the environment. This study is focused on the incineration of waste plastics with energy recovery; hence the proximate and ultimate analyses were carried out to determine the Higher Heat Value (HHV) and the Lower Heat Value (LHV) as well as to estimate the Power Generation Potential (PGP). The empirical results show that the HHV was evaluated as 568.96 kcal/kg and, the LHV was evaluated as 561.55 kcal/kg. Again, the power generation potential (PGP) was enumerated using 100 tons of waste plastics and 4.83 million tons (81% of inadequately managed plastics) to arrive at about 0.6MW and 29,000MW respectively. This study contributes to the literature on the problems of waste plastics in Nigeria. Furthermore, it is likely to be a sustainable solution to the backlog of waste plastics in the environment and a supplementary solution to the erratic electric power supply. The results show that the quantity of waste plastics in Nigeria is likely to generate enough electricity to complement the existing source of power supply.