Mechanical-Biological Waste Treatment - Process Concepts, Technology, Problems -
The first mechanical-biological waste treatment plants (MBT) in Germany were aimed at producing a material suitable for landfilling. They were low level plants with rather simple technical standard. In response to changes in legislative and market requirements over the years, the objectives and the technology have developed considerably.
Modern high-level MBT plants were regarded as an alternative to the long-established and effective waste incineration plants (WIP), which however were unwanted for political reasons and due to lacking acceptance on one part of the population. So the initial idea was to avoid combustion by mechanical-biological treatment.
Increasingly, the production of high-grade solid recovered fuel (SRF) and the separation of value added materials for recycling became important objectives. MBT seemed to be a key technology to achieve the political target of full recovery of waste from human settlements till 2020. Furthermore, the production of SRF and recyclable materials should make disposal of municipal solid waste more cost efficient thanks to price reductions or even revenues for these fractions. Besides from very sparsely populated areas, local MBT concepts provided the advantage of lower transport distances and costs in comparison to large central WIPs.
With regard to environmental impacts and legal compliance of landfilling secondary waste from MBT, a compromise has to be made: the MBT landfill fractions could not comply with the disposal criteria specified for ash/slag from WIPs. To allow the implementation of MBT technology, laid down in the Ordinance on Environmentally Compatible Storage of Waste from Human Settlements and on Biological Waste-Treatment Facilities (in German: Abfallablagerungsverordnung - AbfAblV) the German legislator defined special assignment criteria for MBT landfill fractions which are far less strict than those for WIP residues.
Thus, especially in the last years before the ban on landfilling of untreated waste from human settlements became effective on 1st June 2005, numerous plants were built, which vary widely in their process configuration and its technical realization. Meanwhile MBT plants have established in Germany. The numerous modifications and retrofits show that the development of the MBT technology is still far from complete.
This paper first of all provides an overview of the number, locations and capacities of MBT plants operated in Germany. On the basis of the analysis of their processes it describes the characteristics of the different process concepts and their processing configurations.
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