(best examples and good practices) on household organic waste ...

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3. Large scale biodegradable waste treatment methods
3.1 Thermal treatment
Introduction
The biodegradable fraction of household waste besides the already recorded
treatment methods of (composting <strong>and</strong> AD) can be treated as part of the mixed
waste fraction in large scale facilities. These methods are also recorded for
completeness of the report.
Thermal treatment is a term that describes all of those waste treatment
technologies, used for the combustion or heating of all kind of waste. There are
many different technologies which differ by the:
‣ The specific waste catered for.
‣ Amount of oxygen <strong>and</strong>
‣ Process temperature
Thermal methods for waste management aim at the reduction of the waste
volume, the conversion of waste into harmless materials <strong>and</strong> the utilization of
the energy that is hidden within waste as heat, steam, electrical energy or
combustible material. They include all processes converting the waste content
into gas, liquid <strong>and</strong> solid products with simultaneous or consequent release of
thermal energy. (Moustakas.,2010)
The important technologies are:
Incineration
Gasification
Pyrolysis
Plasma technology
All of the above mentioned technologies produce large quantities of heat which
can be recovered as process heat, steam or hot water for district heating or for
the production of electricity. Although incineration is by far the most widely
applied, the three most widely spread types of thermal waste treatment are: