Mass, energy and material balances of SRF production process. Part 3: Solid recovered fuel produced from municipal solid waste

Abstract

This is the third and final part of the three-part article written to describe the mass, energy and material balances of the solid recovered fuel production process produced from various types of waste streams through mechanical treatment. This article focused the production of solid recovered fuel from municipal solid waste. The stream of municipal solid waste used here as an input waste material to produce solid recovered fuel is energy waste collected from households of municipality. This article presents the mass, energy and material balances of the solid recovered fuel production process. These balances are based on the proximate as well as the ultimate analysis and the composition determination of various streams of material produced in a solid recovered fuel production plant. All the process streams are sampled and treated according to CEN standard methods for solid recovered fuel. The results of the mass balance of the solid recovered fuel production process showed that 72% of the input waste material was recovered in the form of solid recovered fuel; 2.6% as ferrous metal, 0.4% as non-ferrous metal, 11% was sorted as rejects material, 12% as fine faction and 2% as heavy fraction. The energy balance of the solid recovered fuel production process showed that 86% of the total input energy content of input waste material was recovered in the form of solid recovered fuel. The remaining percentage (14%) of the input energy was split into the streams of reject material, fine fraction and heavy fraction. The material balances of this process showed that mass fraction of paper and cardboard, plastic (soft) and wood recovered in the solid recovered fuel stream was 88%, 85% and 90%, respectively, of their input mass. A high mass fraction of rubber material, plastic (PVC-plastic) and inert (stone/rock and glass particles) was found in the reject material stream.

Key factors influencing the environmental performance of pyrolysis, gasification and incineration Waste-to-Energy technologies

“…The MSW is upgraded (through shredding, and pelletization) to accord with the required quality of SRF. Such processing requires energy and the data are taken from Nasrullah [43]. Then, the waste passes into the gasifier, which operates at 850-900°C to generate syngas.…”

Comparison of waste-to-energy technologies of gasification and incineration using life cycle assessment: Case studies in Finland, France and China

“…The waste is assumed to undergo size reduction, moisture reduction, followed by palletisation as SRF. According to the study of Nasrullah et al (2015), the relevant energy consumption is assumed to be 70 kWh of electricity per ton of MSW. 72% of the MSW ends up as SRF, and approximately 86% of the energy content of the waste is transferred to the SRF.…”

Characterisation and composition identification of waste-derived fuels obtained from municipal solid waste using thermogravimetry: A review

“…However, these ranges might differ from the actual ranges of fossil-based polymers content in SRF/RDF depending on the particular sub-fractions of MSW from which SRF/RFD are generated (e.g household vs. commercial and industrial waste) (Nasrullah et al, 2014(Nasrullah et al, , 2015, the targeted properties for SRF/ RDF, for example, maximum tolerant level of chlorine (Cl) (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2014), and the recovery efficiency of both MBT plants (Velis et al, 2010) and material recovery facilities (MRFs) (Cimpan et al, 2016;Iacovidou et al, 2017). For example, despite research and development efforts that have been conducted for the separation of black and highly coloured plastic materials from post-consumer plastic streams (e.g.…”