Development of local municipal solid waste management in the Western Transdanubia region of Hungary

The municipality of Zalaegerszeg is a centre of a Western Transdanubian area, where the MSW management public service for about 500,000 habitants has to be solved daily. In 2016, a Hungarian planning and manufacturing company, the 3B Hungary Ltd. started a project with the Institute of Raw Materials and Environmental Processing, University of Miskolc, to reduce waste landfilling in this region focusing on the local handling and utilisation of the residual municipal solid wastes (RMSW). Processing and utilisation of some selectively collected municipal waste streams were solved previously; therefore, research is focused only on RMSW. Two development stages were planned. The first one is the construction of a mechanical processing plant with which the landfilling ratio of RMSW can be reduced below 60 %. The second one is the local and combined thermal utilisation of the RDF and bio-fraction with which landfilling of RMSW can be further decreased below 15 %.
The first development stage has been accomplished. A new, almost completely Hungarian developed and produced waste processing plant (60,000 tons/year capacity) was inaugurated on 13th July 2018. Intensive research is taking place for accomplishing the second development stage. A common Hungarian problem right now is, that the incineration capacity for RDF thermal utilisation is lower than the produced RDF quantities and that long transport distances exist; therefore, a local solution is a priority. This paper also reports on findings for mechanical pre-treatment, mainly pelletising tests of these material streams to produce fuels for the pyrolysis and to measure the material features for the technological and economic design.