Thermal waste treatment - An essential component of a sustainable waste treatment system

摘要

The long term goal of both scientific research and development and waste management planning implementation is the avoidance of waste and the realization of widely closed, energy efficient material cycles (circular economy). Worldwide people are working intensively to achieve this goal. The complete avoidance of waste, also in the future, is not possible: the zero-waste option is a mere chimera. Therefore, the focus should be on the substantial and/or energetic, insofar as ecologically and economically useful, use of accruing wastes. When the above option is not possible, an outward transfer from the material cycle is consequential, for instance through the thermal treatment of hazardous waste and the safe depositing of residues featuring potential concentrated inorganic pollutants.