Abstract
This paper presents the mass, energy and material
balances of a solid recovered fuel (SRF) production
process. The SRF is produced from commercial and
industrial waste (C&IW) through mechanical treatment
(MT). In this work various streams of material produced
in SRF production process are analyzed for their
proximate and ultimate analysis. Based on this analysis
and composition of process streams their mass, energy and
material balances are established for SRF production
process. Here mass balance describes the overall mass
flow of input waste material in the various output
streams, whereas material balance describes the mass flow
of components of input waste stream (such as paper and
cardboard, wood, plastic (soft), plastic (hard), textile
and rubber) in the various output streams of SRF
production process. A commercial scale experimental
campaign was conducted on an MT waste sorting plant to
produce SRF from C&IW. All the process streams (input and
output) produced in this MT plant were sampled and
treated according to the CEN standard methods for SRF: EN
15442 and EN 15443. The results from the mass balance of
SRF production process showed that of the total input
C&IW material to MT waste sorting plant, 62% was
recovered in the form of SRF, 4% as ferrous metal, 1% as
non-ferrous metal and 21% was sorted out as reject
material, 11.6% as fine fraction, and 0.4% as heavy
fraction. The energy flow balance in various process
streams of this SRF production process showed that of the
total input energy content of C&IW to MT plant, 75%
energy was recovered in the form of SRF, 20% belonged to
the reject material stream and rest 5% belonged with the
streams of fine fraction and heavy fraction. In the
material balances, mass fractions of plastic (soft),
plastic (hard), paper and cardboard and wood recovered in
the SRF stream were 88%, 70%, 72% and 60% respectively of
their input masses to MT plant. A high mass fraction of
plastic (PVC), rubber material and non-combustibles (such
as stone/rock and glass particles), was found in the
reject material stream
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1398-1407 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Waste Management |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- Commercial and industrial waste
- input and output streams
- material balances
- mechanical treatment
- solid recovered fuel
