Techno-Economics of Hydrocarbon Fuel Production and Recyclables Recovery from Landfill-Destined Municipal Solid Waste: AI-Enhanced Materials Recovery Facility Design: Article No. 146643

Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) production from cellulosic paper fractions of municipal solid waste (MSW) destined for landfills has strong potential to advance environmental, social, and economic sustainability across the aviation and waste sectors. This study proposes an artificial intelligence-enabled material recovery facility (AI-MRF) design to efficiently characterize, separate, process, and convert recovered paper waste from MSW into intermediate chemicals and SAF. The AI-MRF, designed to process 233,091 metric tons of MSW annually, integrates smart manufacturing technologies including AI, visual and hyperspectral imaging, multi-sensor data, and traditional sorting systems. Well-characterized and sorted cellulosic paper waste was utilized for chemical and fuel production scenarios, while clean plastics, metals, and glass were considered for recycling. Conversion of paper waste into intermediate sugars achieved a net present value (NPV) of up to $67 million. For sugar-to-SAF production scenarios, the minimum fuel selling price (MFSP) was calculated at $6.11 per gasoline gallon equivalent (GGE) when excluding recyclable revenue, and $4.03 per GGE when halving recyclable revenue. The MFSP was further reduced to $1.96 per GGE when accounting for SAF sales and recyclables. Nationally, this approach could yield about 2 billion GGE of hydrocarbon fuel annually from available MSW in the United States.