Treatment of Solid Waste

Mainly due to the environmental constraints arising from untreated biodegradable waste, municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems are moving to resource recovery-based solutions, where biological waste treatment options are an important means of integrated MSW management solutions. Composting and anaerobic digestion (AD) are well-established technologies for the treatment of source segregated biodegradable waste, producing good quality products (compost and digestate) and, in the case of AD, also energy in the form of biogas. For the treatment of mixed MSW, different Mechanical–Biological Treatment (MBT) technologies offer the possibility of recovering materials, mainly through the production of refuse derived fuels (RDF)/solid recovered fuels (SRF) and/or a stabilized material for disposal. The principles of these three treatment options for solid waste and an overview of the available technologies are given in this chapter. Further, the status of the technologies for Germany and Europe is briefly described.