Abstract
Mechanical and Biological Treatment (MBT) technology is the combined process of mechanical separation and biological volume reduction/drying that can handle urban waste as a means of controlling the amount and quality of waste going into landfills. The combination of mechanical and biological processes is decided upon in a flexible way depending on waste characteristics and the required quality of the material or energy being used. MBT system has often been evaluated by its marketability of Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF). Although the marketability of SRF is comparably low in Southeast Asia, where there is a need to overhaul urban waste management systems, the effective volume reduction by MBT would prove its feasibility for this region. In local and middle-small scale municipalities in Korea, MBT feasibility is comparable to thermal treatment, with the expectation that there would be industrial demand for SRF. In Japan, it is hard to change to MBT from thermal treatment, which has prevailed as a sanitary and effective waste decomposition technology, despite the fact that financing waste treatment must be improved in most local governments. Small-scale incinerators that don’t have thermal recovery processing, mainly located in small municipalities in the countryside or isolated islands, would be high on the list for MBT replacement. The MBT system should certainly be investigated as an option for waste pretreatment, taking into consideration local meteorological conditions, the area’s history of waste management and social acceptability.
