MATERIAL RECOVERY FROM MIXED MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE RESOURCE RECOVERY FROM MIXED MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE

摘要

The European waste management industry is developing more and more from a disposal industry to a resource recovering industry. This transformation is driven by several factors, such as legal regulations, an increasing demand for resources paired with a lack of primary resources and the understanding that the utilization of waste materials reduces the environmental impacts of waste generation itself. Especially MSW waste is still a major concern due to the large number of sources and the complexity of some of the generated material streams. While the resource recovery potential of separately collected valuable fractions is already unlocked and industrial processes for the processing are installed, a major share in the waste streams collected in private households goes into the mixed municipal solid waste (MMSW). This waste is mostly disposed or used for energy recovery with a small percentage of metals recovered for material recycling. To evaluate the economic feasibility of altered recovery processes and increased recovery of materials from MMSW for material recycling processes, the composition, the technically accessibility have to be considered. Figure 1 shows the different waste streams generated in private households. While the potential for secondary resources has been investigated for all the streams except for the mixed municipal solid waste, subsidiary processing and recycling industries have been established, but still 40 % of the waste generated in private households are collected as a mixed fraction and disposed (with minimal resource recovery). Due to the composition, the high moisture content and the presence of fine particles the contained materials suffer from surface contamination and even if separated and purified according to the different material fractions (e.g. glass, paper, plastics) the quality of the acquired concentrates is not comparable to materials extracted from separately collected fractions.