Municipal solid waste and hospital waste

80 industrial sites in Europe have now adopted the NEUTREC^® PROCESS for the dry treatment of flue gases using BICAR^®TEC sodium bicarbonate. The majority of these sites incinerate solid municipal waste and hospital waste
See the EXAMPLES BY MARKET.

The NEUTREC^® process easily meets the performance requirements of the new European Directive 2000/76/EC of 4 December 2000 for the incineration and co-incineration of municipal and industrial waste. This technology can also be adapted, without major modifications, to every size of unit, both in new installations and in existing units that need to be brought in line with the new standards.

The incineration site
Modern waste management techniques require local authorities to acquire facilities to recycle, upgrade and handle their waste in the best possible environmental, technical and economic conditions.

In this context, thermal treatment needs to find its 'right place' alongside other means of management, in response to the real need to treat and incinerate for energy production those elements of municipal waste which cannot be otherwise recycled or composted.

Current legislation limiting emission values and severely restricting on aqueous discharges penalises cleaning processes which produce effluent, and favours dry processes.

MUNICIPAL WASTE IN EUROPE

Europe's municipal waste in figures
Right now, European Union countries together produce over 2 billion tons of municipal waste of every kind. Each citizen throws out on average 390 kg of household waste a year. Out of 90 to 120 million tons of municipal waste that is collected:
60% is tipped,
25% is incinerated,
8% is sorted for recycling,
6% undergoes biological treatment (composting or methanisation).

HOSPITAL WASTE
Health care waste is generated by the various diagnostic, monitoring, preventive, curative and palliative activities that are part of human and veterinary medicine.

The main producers of such waste are hospitals and clinics, teaching and research institutions, industrial establishments, individual health professionals and the physical persons exercising the waste producing.

Health care waste needs either to be incinerated, or pre-treated using approved disinfection equipment.
In order to minimise any environmental impact, each incineration installation needs to include an effective flue gas treatment system.

Hospital waste, when combusted, produces a higher concentration of hydrochloric acid than does municipal waste. The present legislative trend is towards stringent standards, such as the Incineration Directive 2000/76/EC of the European Parliament and Council.

Pollutants
The incineration of municipal and hospital waste produces acids (hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides), heavy metals, dioxins, furans and dust.

Injection of BICAR^®TEC sodium bicarbonate enables these acids to be precipitated with optimal efficiency whilst remaining within the legal limits.

Low reagent consumption:  BICAR®TEC
Where installations are designed and operated within the NEUTREC^® process guidelines, the purification meets the strictest emission limits, with a particularly low combustion of the order of 10-15 kg of sodium bicarbonate reagent per ton of solid municipal waste.

Production of purification residues from municipal waste flue gas (PRMWFG).
The effectiveness of sodium bicarbonate as a reagent reduces the quantity of residual sodium chemicals from the cleaning of the flue gas to around 7 to 10 kg per ton of solid municipal waste.

Use of the purification residues
The NEUTREC^® process allows flue gas purification products to be treated and recycled as a function of the particular processes and local technical, legislative and economic constraints. Various alternatives exist, allowing made-to-measure solutions to be found in very many cases: SOLVAL/Italy - RESOLEST/France

Flue gas purification systems fitted with double filtering offer very interesting economic outlets for the residual products. Link avec Procédé - valorisation des résidus
Recycling of the residues

Dumping on landfill sites
Recycling of the purification products minimises the quantity of final residues and so considerably reduces the landfill costs.

Services
To permit optimal implementation of the NEUTREC^® process, SOLVAY proposes the following  services:

• Help in designing flue gas purification installations
• Start-up support until installations are operating optimally

SOLVAY owns the know-how of the NEUTREC^® flue gas cleaning process and makes it available to operators and consulting engineers.

For more information:

• SERVICES 
• RAW FLUE GASES
• CLEAN FLUE GASES

List of examples

Name		Country		Commissioning date		Location
Dalmine (REA)		Italy		28/05/2003		Dalmine (REA)
Burgau		Germany		01/06/1996		Burgau (Landkreis Günzburg)
Coriano		Italy		01/09/1995		Coriano (HERA)
Ecocapitanata Cerignola		Italy		01/01/1995		Cerignola (ECOCAPITANATA)
Oshima		Japan		01/02/2004		Oshima (Hokkaido island)
Rungis		France		01/05/2000		Rungis (GENERIS ONYX)
Uve de Metz Agglomération		France		01/06/2001		Metz (HAGANIS)