Heating Value Prediction for Combustible Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste in Semarang Using Backpropagation Neural Network

Backpropgation neural network was trained to predict of combustible fraction heating value of MSW from the physical composition. Waste-to-Energy (WtE) is a viable option for municipal solid waste (MSW) management. The influence of the heating value of municipal solid waste (MSW) is very important on the implementation of WtE systems. As MSW is heterogeneous material, direct heating value measurements are often not feasible. In this study an empirical model was developed to describe the heating value of the combustible fraction of municipal solid waste as a function of its physical composition of MSW using backpropagation neural network. Sampling process was carried out at Jatibarang landfill. The weight of each sorting sample taken from each discharged MSW vehicle load is 100 kg. The MSW physical components were grouped into paper wastes, absorbent hygiene product waste, styrofoam waste, HD plastic waste, plastic waste, rubber waste, textile waste, wood waste, yard wastes, kitchen waste, coco waste, and miscellaneous combustible waste. Network was trained by 24 datasets with 1200, 769, and 210 epochs. The results of this analysis showed that the correlation from the physical composition is better than multiple regression method.