Waste Management in Germany: some Current Trends

摘要

Driven by governmental regulations and economical boundary conditions some paradigms of municipal waste management are presently seen to be changing in Germany. The sophisticated state-of-the-art municipal waste incineration plant is considered to be too expensive and alternative thermal treatment processes, e.g. the Siemens and the Thermoselect processes have not found the expected acceptance. In the present review some new developments are highlighted. These include small decentralized incinerators with modular gas cleaning, the ConTherm process which consists of a mechanical processing of the waste with subsequent pyrolysis followed by combustion of the pyrolysis gas and coke in a coal fired power station, and the combination of mechanical-biological treatment of the municipal waste with combustion thereafter of the high-calorific residue in a fluidized bed boiler.