Analysis of refuse-derived fuel from the municipal solid waste reject fraction and its compliance with quality standards

The final disposal of the Municipal Solid Waste is still a problem in many countries. The lack of space, the generation of leachate, and the emission of greenhouse gases as well as the requirements of the new legislation on waste dissuade the administrations involved from using the landfill option as a possible means of final disposal of MSW. The terms of the European Legislation on waste management and energy encourage member states to develop waste recovery techniques before sending it to a landfill. Therefore, member states have introduced source separation and mechanical-biological treatment to separate biodegradable recovery fractions (organic, paper-cardboard, plastic packaging, and glass) from the reject fraction, which is afterwards disposed of in landfills. One of the main aims of this study is to analyse the energy recovery properties of the reject fraction from a biological-mechanical treatment plant in Spain. For this purpose, this work presents a physical and chemical characterization of waste reject fraction from a real mechanical-biological treatment plant as well as the metal and halogen content. Additionally, the quality standards of the refused derived fuel processed at the laboratory and the atmospheric emissions of this type of fuel have been determined

Producción y caracterización del CSR procedente del rechazo de una planta de recuperación y compostaje

La valorización energética constituye una de las alternativas para la gestión de los rechazos de las plantas de tratamiento de residuos, ya que se trata de un material que no se puede reciclar, ni compostar ni biometanizar. De esta forma, el rechazo puede transformarse en CSR (combustible sólido recuperado), apto para ser utilizado como combustible alternativo. Esta posibilidad es la que ha estudiado el grupo de investigación INGRES, de la Universidad Jaume I, en la planta de reciclaje y compostaje de RSU que la empresa Reciplasa tiene en Onda (Castellón). Y a tenor de los resultados que han obtenido, parece que la fabricación de CSR es una alternativa posible de valorización energética de aquellos residuos cuyo destino final es su depósito en vertederos

Growth accounting in economic history:Findings, lessons and new directions

There is now a large volume of growth accounting estimates covering the long run experience of advanced countries. However, most of the studies in economic history are not based on state-of-the-art methods. There is a trade-off between maintaining international comparability and achieving the best results for individual countries. A one-size-fits-all approach will not always do justice to the variety of historical experiences since the conventional assumptions may sometimes be inappropriate. Nevertheless, growth-accounting studies have produced some eye-catching results which provide food for thought both for economic historians and for growth economists. These include (1) the finding that TFP growth was comparatively slow during the First Industrial Revolution, (2) Solow's famous conclusion that TFP growth accounted for 7/8ths of American labour-productivity growth was atypical, (3) the impact of new general-purpose technologies on growth typically takes a long time to materialize, ICT being the notable exception and (4) that capital-deepening was much more important relative to TFP growth in east Asian than in western European catch-up growth. Growth accounting is undoubtedly a valuable item in the cliometrician's toolkit. Nonetheless, we anticipate the introduction of more sophisticated methods and look forward to progress in understanding what explains marked differences in TFP performance