Potential and Feasibility of Solid Municipal Waste Treatment with Gasifiers in a Developing Country: A Review for Burkina Faso

In this paper, a review is made in order to broaden our knowledge on the management systems of household waste in the five largest towns of Burkina Faso and propose an environmentally sound thermal way for their treatment. Data from the General Population and Housing Census of 2006 and the statistical handbook of the environment of year 2010 was used to estimate the five largest cities of Burkina Faso inhabitants’ waste production, management and disposal methods. Descriptive statistics have been used to evaluate waste production, thermal energy and improvement to organized household waste collection rates. These cities produce continuously growing quantities of household waste, but infrastructure to manage it is insufficient or almost inexistent. Furthermore the majority of Burkina Faso’s citizens poorly handles or disposes of their household waste. This results to an unhealthy urban environment. It appears that treating municipal waste in gasifiers will give an economical value to waste and possibly improve its collection rate. Gasification has been used several decades ago in Europe, USA end Australia and offers the advantage of accepting a big variety of feedstock. Municipal waste in Burkina Faso that mainly consists of carbonaceous materials appears as a good candidate for gasification. This review suggest that gasifiers represents a good opportunity for municipal waste treatment in Burkina Faso and downdraft gasifiers appears the most suitable technology that could be built, operated and maintained by local technicians without a need for very high special training.