landfill mining in the circular economy - old waste to...

Prof. William Hogland

(Linnaeus University-LNU,

Sweden):

William.hogland@lnu.se

Mobile: +46 70 58 58 352

Landfill Mining in the

Circular Economy

- Old waste to resource Tenerife 9th June 2016

Why the rising waste levels?

Worlds society has grown wealthier, create more and more waste.

Higher living standards makes people buying more products.

More single-person households produce more waste per person

than families. More single-use and disposable products exist

Consumption pattern changes dramatically. Consumers have

more choice and products are designed to have shorter lifespans.

Advances in technology mean that people own and use many

more personal devices, and update often.

Lifestyle changes have increased our quality of life which gives

more waste.

Waste Management Vision

Zero waste!

Longterm goals 2020:

Decoupling amount of waste – growth rates

Strong upward movement in EU waste hierarchy

GDP

Amount of waste

Swedish household waste

Decrease in

landfilling

Energy Recovery

Material Recovery

Biological Recovery

Composting Anaerobe

Digestion

Packaging Recycling paper

Metal Scrap

Electronics

Landfill

Total amount treated 2007-2011 in tonnes

Council Directive 1999/31/EC of 26 April 1999

on the landfill of waste’ (the Landfill Directive)

•14 of the European countries reported having 8934

active landfills just before the Landfill Directive

was implemented (landfills for inert material are

missing)

• The need of storage of waste and recyclables increased

Existing Landfills 4 000 - 6 000 landfills in Sweden

75 000 – 100 000 landfills in the Baltic Sea Region

150 000 – 500 000 landfills in EU

Active at 1999/31/EC EU Council Directive

300 in Sweden

366 in Finland

371 in Estonia

550 in Latvia

800 in Lithuania

2984 in Germany

In 1999 – 21 incineration plants for solid waste in Sweden In 2012 – 31 incineration plants In 2015 -34 Incineration plants

Import and Export of MSW in Sweden

Fire in the largest landfill in the Indian, city of Mumbai, 132 hectares near Thane Creek, receive 3,700 metric tons trash per day, about

one-third of the city’s waste, 30 m high, January 2016.

Bild © NASA Earth Observatory - Natural Colour Image

10

Avalanche in a landfill killed 50 persons

Concept of Biocover System

(In Tien, 2015)

Waste Generation and Waste as a Resource

• Laurent et al. (2014) says the annual total solid waste generation

worldwide is about 17 billion tonnes and will reach about 27 billion

tonnes by 2050.

• Solid waste contains many important constituents, as valuable metals

zinc, copper, nickel, chromium and lead.

• Man are wasting huge volumes of important metal resources,

literature has highlighted continuous depletion of natural stocks

(including metals) gives higher prices in metal market (Meylan and

Spoerri, 2014).

The circular economy

• Aims to eradicate waste—not just from manufacturing processes, but systematically, throughout the life cycles and uses of products and their components.

• Tight component and product cycles of use and reuse, aided by product design, help define the concept of a circular economy and distinguish it from the linear take–make–dispose economy, which wastes large amounts of embedded materials, energy, and labor.

Zero Waste • Zero Waste - a philosophy that encourages the redesign of resource life

cycles so all products are reused. No trash should be sent to landfills

and incinerators

• Zero Waste - a goal that is ethical, economic, efficient and visionary, to

guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate

sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are designed

to become resources for others to use.

• Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to

systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and

materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury

them.

• Zero Waste implementation will eliminate all discharges to land, water

or air that are a threat to planetary, human, animal or plant health.

(Wikipedia)

“Beyond the zero waste concept” • Encourages recovery of all materials lost during the entire life cycles of different

products manufactured, which are still available in different sinks (landfills, sediments of rivers, ocean, etc.).

• All waste, materials and chemical compounds lost as sludge, slag, harbor sediments and others can in principle, return to the anthropogenic loops

• The toxics substances should be removed from the circuits and handled in an environmental friendly way.

• The long-term goal is to apply such innovative approach in an environmental and economic efficient way, making use of the accumulated knowledge, including reuse/recycling of materials bound in urban and rural structures. This will include landfill mining, glass mining, harbor and bay mining as well as ”seafloor mining”

… to a circular

economy

W. Bosmans, 2014

NEW CONCEPT:

Bank Account Storage Cells!!

The landfills and old dump sites considered

being anthropogenic reservoirs for raw

materials instead of burying materials only (European circular Economy Conference, 2015).

The circular economy approach is highlighted

(which means reusing, repairing, renovating

and recycling the existing materials and

products) and could be the solution for the

future needs of more resources.

The first Excavation – NSR Helsingborg

1995 1994

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1930 1940 1950 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995

%

Garden waste Paper Plastic Glass Textiles Metal Other/Miscellaneous

Paper

Plastic

21

Whats this??

Garden Waste

Landfilling through history in

Sweden

Economics of landfill mining?

Critical Metals within EU

41 raw materials analysed Aluminum Antimony Barytes Bauxite

Bentonite Beryllium Borates Chromium

Clays (incl. kaolin) Cobalt Copper Diatomite

Feldspar Fluorspar Gallium Germanium

Graphite Gypsum Indium Iron ore

Limestone Lithium Magnesite Magnesium

Manganese Molybdenum Nickel Niobium Perlite Platinum Group Metals (PGMs)

Rare earths (REE) Rhenium Silica sand

Silver Talc Tantalum

Tellurium Titanium

Tungsten Vanadium

Zinc

2016-06-13

Wind sieve Trommel screen Pre-crushing

Vika landfill, Katrineholm, Sweden Mechanized process working on landfill mining. Wind sieve, trommel screen, pre-crushing,

pre-sorting by excavator.

WIND SCREENING

Sorting of coarse fraction and medium fraction to get a light burnable fraction (mainly plastic) and a heavy fraction

Magnet sorts iron scrap from heavy fraction

Sorting of non-mangnetic fractions?

Remainings of heavy fraction are construction materials (gravel materials)

Problem materials

Scrap and metal separation

Tekna 2008-02-01 william.hogland@hik.se 29

Plastic

Plank

High Temp

in Plastic

Storage Plastic Storage

Leachate

RDF Energy

• Sieving

10 – 40 mm

15-17 MJ/kg

Waste to oil

Reuse of old plastics

The Estonian landfill before

and after excavation

Sampling

Waste was well characterised

Paper 7%

Soft plastic 17% PET plastic

1% Mixed

plastic and textile 20%

Metal 6%

Wood 8%

Rubber 4%

Glass 1%

Hazardous waste

1%

Stones 22%

Reject 3%

Others, < 40 mm 10%

Coarse

Totally, 5453 kg fine fraction < 40 mm

14 critical raw materials Graphite

Rare Earth Elements (REE)

Fluorspar

Platinum Group Metals (PGM)

Waste from Kudjape Municipal LF

Total content of elements detected in samples of fine fraction of waste from the Kudjape Landfill

(average and median values are shown)

Högbytorp, RagnSells Excavation

Avoid transporting bucket-loads of waste by excavator.

Partial contribution (average in %) of the different sorting fractions in each of the excavated test pit. (n=3) Högbytorp landfill, Sweden

Hole

1

Hole

2

Hole

3

Hole

4

0

20

40

60

80

100%

pa

rtia

l c

on

trib

utio

n

<10mm

10-40 mm

> 40 mm

<40mm

Högbytorp, Sweden • Fraction <40mm (10-40mm and <10 mm), approximately 38% of such

fraction was <10mm suggesting it a considerable volume of soil-like fraction.

• No significant differences between different test pits nor in terms of different excavated depths suggesting that fine fraction (<10mm) will have considerable contribution in case a full-scale excavation is to be done making it necessary.

• Proper strategies to transport, store and further use of such fine fraction for different purposes (adequate properties and quality needed).

Aluminiumssulfate (dos 58 g Al2(SO4)3/m3 , 1 540 USD/ton and 46 ton Fe, 46 USD*/ton

MINING OF WATER WORKS SLUDGE

Contaminated Sediments of Oskarshamn

Harbor a problem or as resource:

Feasibility of Nutrients and Metals

remediation/recovery?

Metal Amount in

Oskarshamn

Price (USD/kg) Can we get it from the

sediments??

Zinc 570 ton 2 USD 1,140,000

Copper 250 ton 7.89 USD 1,972,500

Lead 160 ton 2.1 USD 336,000

Arsenic 28 ton 1.92 USD 53,760

Nickel 20 ton 31.5 USD 630,000

Cobalt 16 ton 123 USD 1,968,000

Cadmium 3 ton 7.54 USD 22,620

TOTAL = USD 6,122,880

Phosphorus and Nitrogen

??? USD

Glass Mining

Glass Mining?

The Kindom of Crystal, Småland, Sweden

Foto: MARIA ERIKSSON, 2001

Urban Mining

Foto William Hogland

Conclusions

• Increased world population, non-sustainable waste management

and hugh use of global resources give problems for future

• World society grown wealthier gives more waste

• EU-council Directive 1999/31/EC closed landfills, gave more

recycling and incineration

• Landfills kills, give fires, methane emission, avalanche, leachate,

explosions etc

• Zero waste - go also for beyond the zero waste concept

• Go for urban mining, landfill mining, glass mining, ash and sludge

mining, harbor mining

• Recovery and remediation of old landfill and industrial areas will

return lots of lost resources to the society and the anthropogenic

circuits, also fractions < 10mm

• “Bank account cells” shall be constructed environmentally correct

storage of excavated mineral rich waste fractions

Let’s go for Landfill/urban mining!!!

William Hogland

Faculty of Health and Life Sciences

Dept. of Biology and Environmental Science

Linnaeus University

SE-391 82 Kalmar, Sweden

E-mail: william.hogland@lnu.se

Mobile: +46 (0)70 58 58 352

Linnaeus University