Do the manual sorting and selective dissolution methods for the determination of biogenic content correlate for solid recovered fuels (SRF)?
Séverin, M., Velis, C., Longhurst, P.J. and Pollard, S.J.T., Cranfield University, UK
(free)
Stringent targets for biodegradable waste diversion from landfill and a growing emissions trading market have created the need for standard methods for the determination of biogenic content (χB) in solid recovered fuels (SRF). We compare the manual sorting and selective dissolution methods (MSM and SDM) for 15 waste streams obtained from a UK MBT facility. An optimised categorisation was suggested for the MSM, but fine particles appear to be an issue for consistency. This study participates to the refinement of the draft standard CEN/TS 15440:2006, and shows that provided a few practical adjustments are made, are applicable to MBT internal streams (as opposed to SRF only). This is of interest for MBT performance investigation and process monitoring. The two methods provide statistically different biogenic content values. However, they correlate well (r²>0.9) and the relative difference between them was < 5% for biogenic contents between 21%w/wd and 72%w/wd. This range includes the average SRF biogenic content of ca. 68%w/wd. The SDM repeatability is characterised by relative standard deviations on triplicates of < 2.5% for the studied population. These results are valuable to SRF market practitioners to understand and compare available biogenic content data.
Key words: solid recovered fuel, MBT, biogenic content, biomass, selective dissolution, manual sorting
