Solid and Hazardous Wastes SENV776

Module 2: Waste Management and Categories of Wastes

 
 
Professor Gordon McKay, PhD, DSc
Division of Sustainability
Hamad Bin Khalifa University
Qatar Foundation
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes
A Policy Framework for Waste Management
It is necessary for every country to adopt a Management System to handle
all aspects of all the wastes generated within their boundaries.

The first stage in this Policy Framework is to identify and quantify all the
types of waste in their country and establish one or more Authorities to
establish the Management Framework for each waste category.

This will lead to a better understanding of how to develop the technologies

to be adopted to handle and process the many types of/and the changing
types of wastes.

The Waste Management Policy Framework has to encompass long, medium

and short term changes in their collection and disposal strategy.

Lets take an overview look of some of these waste categories.

 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

What are Wastes?

 
Definition:
 
Solid waste – all solid matter that is discarded as
useless or unwanted.
It includes the heterogeneous volumes of materials
thrown away by urban society as well as the more
homogeneous wastes from agricultural, commercial
and industrial processes.
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes
What are Wastes?
Where are They From and What Does this Mean for Solids
 
• Municipal Solid Waste
• Construction Waste/Demolition Waste
• Agricultural/Biomass Waste
• Sewage
• WEEE
• Hazardous Waste
• Chemical Waste
• Industrial Waste/ Commercial Waste
• Biomedical Waste
• Mining Waste
• Radioactive Waste/Nuclear Waste
• Toxic Waste
• Marine Debris
• Special Waste
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes
What Do These Terms Mean?
 
From country to country not all these previous categories will be
used but we can see some overlap.
But in other countries more(or less) categories may be included in
the list.
Therefore, it is always important to understand what is included and
excluded in making statistical comparisons on wastes produced in
different countries and even in different categories of wastes within
the same country.
Also do these waste statistics include or exclude recycled waste
materials…..(and what is meant by recycling – separating or
separating and being re-used).
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

For example: with Municipal Solid Waste, is it?

(1) domestic, or
(2) commercial, or
(3) industrial, or
(1) + (2) or
(1) + (3) (unlikely) or
(2) + (3) or
(1) + (2) + (3)???
Let’s take a look at these categories in more detail.
Municipal Solid Waste Classification
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

Solid Waste Classification (cont.)

“Special Wastes”
 
Special waste: includes animal carcasses, asbestos, clinical
waste, livestock waste, sludge, and stabilized residues from
the Chemical Waste Treatment Centre (CWTC).
 
“Other solid waste”
Refers to solid waste types not covered by the previous
descriptions.
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

Simplified Solid Waste Classification

 
Municipal solid waste (MSW):
• Domestic waste
• Commercial waste
• Industrial waste: non-hazardous waste arising from industrial
activities BUT
does not include C&D waste and chemical waste.

Construction & demolition (C&D) waste

• Type I C&D waste: Inert materials (80%)
• Type II C&D waste: Non-inert materials (20%)

Chemical waste: considered as hazardous waste

Clinical waste: considered as hazardous waste
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes
Municipal Solid Waste
 
The categories in this class include:
 
Physical component
Bulky waste
Glass/Ceramics
Metals
Paper
Plastics
Putrescibles
Textiles
Wood/Rattan
Other
Hazardous Household Waste
Total
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes
Construction and Demolition Waste
 
There is:
Type I C&D Waste:
Comprising inert materials (80%)
Type II C&D Waste:
Non-inert materials (20%)

Items in the C&D category are: soils and clays; sand and shale;
used concrete, bricks and other construction materials; woods
(eg doors, floors and window frames; plastics and metals (hinges,
nails, reinforcing bars).
Several countries have set up processing and recycling
facilities/plants for C&D waste to be recycled and re-used.
Solid and Hazardous Wastes
Unsorted Mixed MSW
MSW/Food Waste from a Local Market
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

Agricultural and Biomass Wastes

 
Grain crops – corn, maize, wheat, barley
Rice,
Oil palm industries,
Sugar Industry-cane and beet,
Other Bio-oil Producing Crops (Jatropha, Algae),
Fruit Shells-coconut, hazelnut, peanut, Brazil nut,
Fruit Stones-plums, peaches, dates, avocados.
Fruit and Vegetable waste
Rice Husk – the third largest cereal
crop in the world
Jatropha bio-oil to Jet Fuel Oil
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

Sewage Handling
 
Sewage is essentially a slurry or sludge and handled
mostly as a liquid.
The suspended solids are digested by microorganisms and
then settled with the aid of coagulants (coagulation
process)
However, a number of commercial processes now dry
the sludge and produce a high calorific value RDSSF
– refuse derived sewage sludge fuel pellets or
briquettes for combustion
(called RDF or RDSSF “treated Sewage is often termed
biosolids”)
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

WEEE
  Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive

(WEEE Directive) is the European Community directive
2012/19/EU on waste electrical and electronic equipment
(WEEE) which, together with the RoHS Directive 2002/95/EC,
became European Law in February 2003.
The RoHS Directive set restrictions upon European
manufacturers as to the material content of new electronic
equipment placed on the market.

Note: This is the most rapidly growing waste category over

the past 5 years due to new products and technical
obsolescence and fashion.
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes
WEEE (continued) 
Categorisations of WEEE
 
The WEEE directive sets a total of 10 categories:
 
Large household appliances
Small household appliances
IT and telecommunications equipment
Consumer equipment
Lighting equipment
Electrical and electronic tools
Toys, leisure and sports equipment
Medical devices
Monitoring and control instruments
Automatic dispensers
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes
WEEE (cont.)
 
Hazardous Electronic Wastes Comprise:
 
Uninterruptable power supplied, lead-acid batteries
Cathode ray tubes (televisions, computer monitoring)
Fluorescent tubes, backlights to laptop screens, thin-film
transistors
Electrical/electronic equipment containing polychlorinated
biphenyl (PCB)*
Fridges and freezers, due to chlorofluorocarbon (CFCs)
refrigerants, which are ozone-depleting substances,
and are considered hazardous materials.
 “Back-street e-waste processing

Acid Leaching of Precious Metals,

E-waste Material Recovery, Nigeria, Africa Guiyi, China
 Unofficial e-waste processing

E-waste recovery/dumping?? Guiyi, China

 Illegal e-waste practices??

Finding the valuable pieces????? Domestic precious metal

extraction in sodium cyanide
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

Hazardous Wastes
 
These wastes may be found in different physical states such
as gaseous, liquids, or solids.
A hazardous waste is a special type of waste because it
cannot be disposed of by common means like other by-
products of our everyday lives.
Depending on the physical state of the waste, treatment
and solidification processes might be required.
Hazardous landfill site areas are required, hazardous waste
incinerators are frequently used.
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

Hazardous Wastes
 
Hazardous waste is waste that poses substantial or potential
threats to public health or the environment.
In the United States, the treatment, storage, and disposal of
hazardous waste is regulated under the Resource Conservation
and Recovery Act (RCRA).
Hazardous wastes are defined under RCRA in 40 CFR 261 where
they are divided into two major categories: characteristic wastes
and listed wastes.
 
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes
Hazardous Wastes
 
Characteristic Wastes and Listed Wastes
 
Characteristic hazardous wastes are materials that are known
or tested to exhibit one or more of the following four hazardous
traits:
 
Ignitability (i.e., flammable)
Reactivity
Corrosivity
Toxicity
 
Listed hazardous wastes are materials specifically listed by
regulatory authorities as a hazardous waste which are from
non-specific sources, specific sources, or discarded chemical
products.
What properties of a material make it hazardous
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

Established Waste Treatment Technologies

Incineration/Gasification/Pyrolysis
Landfill
Composting
Recycling /Re-use
Anaerobic Digestion
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

Overview of Solid Waste Types

The major solid and hazardous waste categories have been reviewed.
Others will be covered in the course in detail, for example,
food waste and PCB e-waste.
This course will focus heavily on treatment technologies to convert
wastes into “value added products”.
This area of waste treatment to “value added products” is leading to
many hundreds of new and innovative research opportunities, many of
which will be discussed in the course and may be investigated in more
depth in the major project in this course.
The treatment technologies are listed next.
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

Alternative Waste Treatment Technologies

 
In the UK these are sometimes termed advanced waste
treatment technologies, even though these technologies are
not necessarily more complex than the established
technologies.
 
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes
• Anaerobic digestion
• Alcohol/ethanol production
• Bioconversion of biomass of mixed alcohol fuels (pilot scale)
• Biodrying
• Gasification
• Gas Plasma: Gasification followed by syngas plasma polishing
(commercial test scale)
• In-vessel composting
• Mechanical biological treatment
• Mechanical heat treatment - Incineration
• Plasma arc waste disposal (commercial demonstration scale)
• Pyrolysis
• Refuse-derived fuel
• Sewage treatment
• Composting
• UASB (applied to solid wastes)
• Waste autoclave
Industrial UASB Reactors
Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket
Reactor
Hydro Thane Industrial UASB
 Solid and Hazardous Wastes

Throughout the 14 weeks of this course we will look at the established

conventional methods of waste handling and treatment processes, such
as landfilling and waste to energy incineration, but we will investigate
new routes leading to a more sustainable approach to waste treatment,
including:
Opportunities with food waste – compost, biogas, chemicals production,
animal feeds, vermiculture, chitosan;
New products and metals recovery from e-waste;
Environmental materials from biomass and agricultural wastes;
Improved energy recovery from waste using pyrolysis and gasification,