Page 27 - Refining Biomass Residues for Sustainable Energy and Bioproducts

6 Refining Biomass Residues for Sustainable Energy and Bioproducts

Figure 1.2 Conversion of sulfur into reusable products.

1.2.2 Municipal solid waste

Between the municipalities itself the composition of MSWs will vary and it changes
with respect to time. Nowadays all the municipalities have well-developed waste
development or recycling system, and they follow several properties of the MSW
for their waste conversion process. They are mainly focused on the waste streams
that have intractable wastes such as plastic film and nonrecyclable packaging mate-
rial. The MSW industries have four different components for the reduction of
MSW. The components are as follows:
Recycling
Composting
Disposal
Waste-to-energy conversion

1.2.3 Properties of municipal solid waste

MSWs have three different properties such as physical, chemical, and biological
properties. Important physical properties of MSW includes specific weight, mois-
ture content, particle size and size distribution, field capacity, color, optical proper-
ties, and compacted waste porosity, which are considered for the refinery processes.
Specific weight of the MSW is used to assess the manageable total mass and vol-
ume of waste. Two methods are available for measuring the moisture content of the
material. In the SW management the moisture content of the material was measured
by wet-weight method. The recovery of valuable or reusable materials from the
MSW was done by considering the size and size distribution of component material
in MSW. The chemical properties of MSW are considered for the recovering of
products from them or the selection of suitable alternative processes for the MSW
managements. The biological properties of the MSW, such as biodegradability,
odor, and breeding of flies, are also considered before the processing (Babu et al.,
2012).