Author(s)

MARIE MOLINKOVÁ, JIŘÍ RYŠAVÝ, RADIM KOVAŘÍK, SILVIE PURMENSKÁ, JAKUB ČESPIVA

Abstract

The Czech Republic has committed to ending or significantly reducing landfilling of waste by 2030. At the same time, not only in the energy sector, the emphasis is on sustainability, involving the abandonment of fossil fuels. The new concept of the Opatovice coal-firing power plant is trying to counter these two factors. The presented concept considers energy utilisation of waste in two different major ways. The first is combustion, adapting the mechanical-biological treatment, while the second is gasification, dealt with in Part B of this study. In this part, the issue of regional waste management is viewed from a broad scale. The production of waste in the Czech Republic and in a specific region and the legislation associated with it are discussed, along with the use of outputs from the mechano-biological treatment of the fuel, the outputs of which include retained and passing fractions. The ratio of their mutual production depends on the composition of the waste, which is variable during the year. The retained fraction reaches a calorific value higher than 17 MJꞏkg⁻¹, which requires modification of the classic incinerator for the waste-to-energy (WtE) approach. The passing fraction usually ends up in landfills, conditionally, if the lower heating value and oxygen content do not exceed 6.5 MJꞏkg⁻¹ and 10 mg per 1 g of dry fraction, respectively. The production of such a fuel, which is very strict for biological activity but at the same time environmentally beneficial due to the legislative restriction of waste disposal in landfills, appears to be the most promising use of the passing fraction. The gasification part, as well as environmental impact and the entire evaluation of the concept of the Opatovice WtE power plant are included in Part B of this study.

Keywords

mechanical-biological treatment, waste, waste to energy, landfilling, legislation, incineration, calorific value, environment