Solid Waste Management and Sustainability Technology (NOTE 1)

Joonhong Park

Yonsei CEE Department

2014. 9. 1.

Resource Recovery and Recycle

• Introduction to this course

• Introduction to solid wastewater management

What is sustainability?

• General Definition: meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs.

• Don’t do these: exhausting a natural resource, leaving large costs for future generations or doing irreversible harm to the planet.

• An energy technology is considered sustainable if:

1. It contributes little to manmade climate change. 2. It is capable of providing power for many generations w/o significant reduction in the size of the resource, and 3. It does not leave a burden to future generation.

☞ It is very difficult to say if an energy technology is truly sustainable or not.

3

Scope of this course

• Solid waste treatment and disposal

• Global climate change and sustainable resource technologies

Intro to Solid Waste Management

• Solid waste treatment and disposal

• Global climate change and sustainable resource technologies

Solid Waste in History

10,000 BC – Nomadic life to community life

Waste collection systems

2100 BC – trunk sewers connecting homes

1600 BC – the sanitary laws written by Moses

800 BC – sewers and a primitive water supply (old Jerusalem)

500 BC – a law to require all wastes to be deposited more than a mile out of town (Athens)

200 BC – sanitary police, disposal laws (China)

14AD – a waste collection program (Rome)

1300 – the Black Death

19th century – city and industry caused a lot of environmental pollutions (Charles Dickens)

Solid Waste in History

The 1840s – Edwin Chadwick ( a lawyer), a germ theory.

John Snow, control of cholera epidemic by stopping supply of water that was contaminated.

1866 – New York city declared a war against trash.

The 1880s – the first incinerator (New York city)

materials recovery system => People did not like it.

1934 – federal legislation making the dumping of municipal waste into ocean illegal.

1935 – the first landfill (California)

1953 – the first published engineering guideline for sanitary landfill (American Society of Civil Engineers)

Products influenced the composition of municipal refuse

1908 paper cups in vending machines

1913 Corrugated cardboard for packaging

1924 Kleenex

1935 Beer can

1944 Stryrofoam

1960 Pop-top cans

1963 Aluminum beer cans

1977 PETE soda bottles replace glass

What else?

How about Korean case?

Paradigm shift in solid waste engineering

1.Simply getting the stuff out of town => recycle and reuse

2.The Waste Reduction Revolution (reduce the source of waste)

Economics and Solid Waste

The Invisible Hand (Adam Smith): classic optimism

The law of populations (Thomas Malthus): classic pessimism

But, when the populations grew, famine and deprivation were avoided. This was due to “Technology” – new optimism

The Club of Rome report: resource is limited. – new pessimism.

Developing a balanced world system (sustainable environment)

Three sources of materials

Raw materials

Scrap materials

Materials recovered after the product

Users’ Options

To dispose of this material

To collect the material in sufficient quantities either to use it for energy production or to recycle it back into the industrial sector

To reuse the material for the same or a different purpose without remanufacture.

The 4 Rs

The feasible options for achieving reduced material use and waste generation

1.Reduction

2.Reuse

3.Recycling

4.Recovery

Materials Flow Through Society

AIndustrial Scrap

RawMaterials

IndustrialProduction

WasteManagement

Reuse

DomesticUse

Energy

B

Recycle

Recovery

Raw materials (A) and the materials returned to the environment (B)

Increasing these amounts is good for industry including waste disposal industry.

Large A and B are detrimental

- causing depletion of some resources (ex. Aluminum, petroleum etc.).

- obtaining these materials from concentrated sources and distributing the products over a wide land area (makes recovery and reuse difficult)

Reduction

Achieved by three ways

1)Reducing the amount of material used per product without sacrificing the utility of that product

2)Increasing the lifetime of a product

3)Eliminating the need for the product

Waste reduction in industry: pollution prevention (ex. Enamel paint for car => a new method of painting to reduce VOC contamination)

Waste reduction on the household level: “waste reduction” or “source reduction” referred by the US EPA (ex. Refusing bags, laundry deterent refills, stopping junk mail deliveries, and using cloth diapers)

The level of participation in source reduction is low compared to recycling activities.

Reduction

An integral part of society

Utility and value for more than one purpose

(ex. Paper bags, news papers, coffee cans)

Reuse

A process requires that the owner of the waste material first separate out the useful fraction so that it can be collected separately from the rest of the solid waste.

Requires first identification of some “characteristics” of wastes and then manual segregation of useful materials.

The characteristic known as a code.

- newsprint from glossy magazines

- separation of plastics (difficult to identify)

Recycling

Common types of “Recyclable” Plastics

Code Chemical name Typical uses

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Polyethylene terephthalate

High-density polyethylene

Polyvinyl chloride

Low density polyethylene

Polypropylene

Polystyrene

Mixed plastic

PETE

HDPE

PVC

LDPE

PP

PS

Soft drink bottle

Milk cartons

Pipe

Grocery bags

Car battery casings

Eating utensils

Benches

• Location of wastes: cost for transport

• Low value of material: based upon thermodynamics

• Uncertainty of supply: depending on people’ willingness.

• Administrative and institutional constraints

• Legal restrictions

• Uncertain markets

(NOTE: Despite these difficulties, recycling is successful!)

Obstacles in Recycling

• MRF (materials recovery facilities)

• Impossible to mechanically identify and separate all of the PETE soft drink bottles from refuse. (“pickers” do the job).

• It sounds terribly attractive but is still a marginal option. (availability of firm markets for recovered products).

• Paper industry companies are vertically integrated, meaning that the company owns and operates all of the steps in the papermaking process.

Recovery

Recycling of reusable wastes

Reduction of Volume of Solid wastes

•Combustion

Ultimate Disposal

• Landfill

• Land-farming

• Injection into Earth’s mantle

•Deep-well injection

Solid Waste Pollution Control

Energy Conversion

Of MSW (municipal solid wastes) generated, over 80% is combustible (US case).

This is equivalent about 4.6% of all the fuel consumed by all utilities, 10% of all the coal consumed by all utilities, and about 20% of the electrical energy demand of the private sector of a municipality.

Electricity from burning of gases generated from Landfills

Heats from combustion of solid wastes.

Energy Recovery from Landfill

Gas (CO2 50% and CH4 50%)-Greenhouse gases-Modern landfill has facilities to use methane to generate electricity.

Incinerator

Air-lock automatic feeder

Municipal Waste Combustion

Solid waste volume reduction up to 90% is possible.

Unfortunately, dioxin production is possible.

Causing the problem of ash disposal

10% cannot be combusted (waste computers, old refrigerators)

Integrated Solid Waste Management (ISWM) – US EPA

1) Reducing the quantity of waste

2) Reusing the materials

3) Recycling and recovering materials

4) Combusting for energy recovery

5) Landfill

HW1 (Due: Next Monday)

Write one page essay regarding either of the following questions

1)납골당 방식에 대해서 찬성 혹은 반성인지 논하시오 .

2) 음식쓰레기 , 하수슬러지 , 축산분뇨 등의 액상폐기물의 해양투기가 올해 부터 금지되었고 , 이들의 위생매립장 반입도 법으로 금지되어 있다 . 그러하면 이들의 처리 , 처분은 어떻게 되야 할까 ?