Processing of Heterogeneous Waste Streams by NIR Sorting – Reflections on the Material-Specific Recovery based on selected M(B)T-Waste Streams –

The material recycling as well as the energetic utilization of waste are preferred options in waste management in Europe and Austria in particular. Recovery options are not only to be found based on the current legal framework but are also preferable options compared to pure disposal due to economic reasons. In general, optimized material specific waste routing not only allows for maximizing recovery but also minimizing the over-all costs for the management of a specific waste stream.

Especially in case of heterogeneous waste streams which cannot be reused or material recycled Waste-to-Energy (WtE) is one particularly interesting option. Waste material used as energy resource, e.g. in industrial co-incineration as Solid Recovery Fuel (SRF) in order to replace fossil fuels, needs to be processed to meet certain quality criteria (e.g. in terms of fuel properties as well as the chlorine and heavy metal content). Being the reason for this to avoid negative influences on the co-incineration process as well as the product quality in the case of the cement industry and to secure that environmental standards are not being compromised. During the last years in Europe the biogenic carbon content of the waste streams to be co-incinerated has gained in importance as a determining criterion for the energetic recovery of waste due to legal obligations and resulting economic considerations (EU’s CO2 emission trading scheme).

The required processing demands – material-specific splitting of heterogeneous waste – in order to allow for an optimized routing of resulting waste streams can potentially be met by the use of sensor-based sorting technologies, which are already state-of-the-art for the treatment of separately collected recyclables which are rather homogeneous in their composition. According to Faist & Ragossnig as well as Titech practical results show that the implementation of NIR (Near-infrared) sensor-based sorting is capable of splitting also heterogeneous wastes by material-specific characteristics and allows for generating waste streams that can be recovered.

Copyright:	© TK Verlag - Fachverlag für Kreislaufwirtschaft
Quelle:	Waste Management, Volume 2 (September 2011)
Seiten:	16
Preis inkl. MwSt.:	€ 0,00
Autor:	DI Dr. Arne Michael Ragossnig Dipl.-Ing. Manuel Sommer Dipl.-Ing. Mag. Simone Pieber B.Sc. Martina Meirhofer

Artikel weiterleiten	Artikel kostenfrei anzeigen	Artikel kommentieren

Diese Fachartikel könnten Sie auch interessieren:

The new Waste Framework Directive and its impact on textile waste
© Lehrstuhl für Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
In the course of implementing the circular economy package of the European Union, the Waste Framework Directive was amended recently. Textiles are no longer the poor relation of waste management but have come to the fore.

Development of local municipal solid waste management in the Western Transdanubia region of Hungary
© Lehrstuhl für Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
Hungarian municipal solid wastes (MSW) management has developed tremendously over the past 15 years. More than 3,000 landfills and dumps had been closed, just to mention one improvement. However, still, lots of work is necessary to accomplish the EU’s ambitious aim of decreasing landfilling and increasing recycling and composting.

Combining laser cleaning and LIBS: fast and precise recycling of metal alloys
© Lehrstuhl für Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
In respect of a limited amount of raw material, costs, CO2 and waste reduction, high precision metal recycling is getting more and more important these days. Contaminations of the melt with unwanted or outright detrimental elements (e.g. C, S, P, Cu or Pb in steel, Cr or Ni in low-alloy steels, Li in aluminium and so forth) are a huge liability toward the ‘‘alloy-to-alloy’’ recycling goal and essentially the only option in this case, is either costly dilution with clean raw materials, downgrading or worst case scenario discarding.

Reporting of food waste in the EU – Results of current estimates in Germany
© Lehrstuhl für Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
In February 2019, the German Federal Cabinet adopted the 'National Strategy for Reducing Food Waste', setting a framework for the future direction of this initiative. Among other things, it stipulated that an inter-ministerial "Indicator 12.3 Working Group" should prepare the data bases and methods for nationwide balancing of food waste generation (baseline). Based on existing 2015 data, this status quo analysis will be used as a starting point to agree on milestones for the respective sectors.

Tex2Mat: The recycling of towels and laundry made from PET and cotton
© Lehrstuhl für Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben (11/2020)
The project “Tex2Mat” was a cooperation between companies working in the field of recycling or textiles and universities specializing in the field of polymer engineering and recycling. There were two polymers (PET and PA) examined and the whole project divided into two subprojects.