Mechanical-Biological Waste Treatment and Utilization of Solid Recovered Fuels – State of the Art

Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 26 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide. Even with a state of the art landfill design incorporating methane capture, substantial amounts of methane will still escape to the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. The reduction can best be achieved with the separation of biodegradable waste at source to produce high quality compost. Where such source separation systems are not yet in place or not efficient enough a pre-treatment of the mixed waste can be applied to meet the targets of the EU landfill directive. The two main approaches for such a treatment are Incineration and Mechanical biological Treatment (MBT). MBT is a generic term for the integration of a wide range of waste management processes. MBT is designed to take residual or black bin waste and process it. Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) is a generic term for the integration of a number of waste management processes such as materials recovery facilities (MRF), refuse derived fuel (RDF) production, mechanical separation, sorting, composting and pasteurising. Originally the development of MBT in the last twenty years took place in Germany and Austria but the technology is spread all over in Europe and worldwide in the meantime. The MBT process is designed to take residual or black bin waste and process it so that valuable recyclable materials can be separated out and the biomass or compostable element is separated out and processed through an In Vessel Composting (IVC) or an Anaerobic Digestion (AD) system. One main advantage of the MBT technology is the fundamental flexibility. The construction and layout can be adapted to the legal and technical circumstances on site.