Landfill mining option: MBT role and landfill potential danger

The use of landfills for the disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) has many technical and regulatory limits. An interesting solution is to recover the bales that have been pre-viously stored in a landfill. After specific mechanical biological treatments (MBT), the contents of the bales can be used to produce a solid recovered fuel (SRF) that can be used for energy purposes. The possibility of producing SRF fuels from a landfill in north-ern Italy has been studied and is presented in this paper. The MSW extracted from the landfill, the bio-dried material produced by the waste hypothetically treated in a plant for bio-drying, and the SRF obtained after the extraction of inert materials, metals and glass from the bio-dried material have been characterized. Assessed the waste nature, the potential environmental impact of dioxin release from a possible landfill fire has been analysed, applying the Austal2000 model system