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This is not the current EPA website. To navigate to the current EPA website, please go to This website is historical material reflecting the EPA website as it existed on January 19, 2021. This website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work. More information »
Energy recovery from waste is the conversion of non-recyclable waste materials into usable heat, electricity, or fuel through a variety of processes, including combustion, gasification, pyrolization, anaerobic digestion and landfill gas recovery. This process is often called waste to energy.
At an MSW combustion facility, MSW is unloaded from collection trucks and placed in a trash storage bunker. An overhead crane sorts the waste and then lifts it into a combustion chamber to be burned. The heat released from burning converts water to steam, which is then sent to a turbine generator to produce electricity.
Mass burn facilities are the most common type of combustion facility in the United States. The waste used to fuel the mass burn facility may or may not be sorted before it enters the combustion chamber. Many advanced municipalities separate the waste on the front end to save recyclable products.
Mass burn units burn MSW in a single combustion chamber under conditions of excess air. In combustion systems, excess air promotes mixing and turbulence to ensure that air can reach all parts of the waste. This is necessary because of the inconsistent nature of solid waste. Most mass-burn facilities burn MSW on a sloping, moving grate that vibrates or otherwise moves to agitate the waste and mix it with air.
Refuse derived fuel systems use mechanical methods to shred incoming MSW, separate out non-combustible materials, and produce a combustible mixture that is suitable as a fuel in a dedicated furnace or as a supplemental fuel in a conventional boiler system.
Combustion of MSW grew in the 1980s. By the early 1990s, the United States combusted more than 15 percent of all MSW. The majority of non-hazardous waste incinerators were recovering energy by this time and had installed pollution control equipment. With the newly recognized threats posed by mercury and dioxin emissions, EPA enacted the Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) regulations in the 1990s. As a result, most existing facilities had to be retrofitted with air pollution control systems or shut down
Currently, there are 75 facilities in the United States that recover energy from the combustion of municipal solid waste. These facilities exist in 25 states, mainly in the Northeast. A new facility was built in Palm Beach County, Florida in 2015.
A typical waste to energy plant generates about 550 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy per ton of waste. At an average price of four cents per kWh, revenues per ton of solid waste are often 20 to 30 dollars. For more information, read Is It Better to Burn or Bury Waste for Clean Energy? Exit
Another factor in the slow growth rate of MSW combustion in the United States is public opposition to the facilities. These facilities have not always had air emission control equipment, thus gaining a reputation as high polluting. In addition, many communities do not want the increased traffic from trucks or to be adjacent to any facility handling municipal waste.
Energy recovery from waste is important in the development of sustainable energy policies. EPA continues to develop regulations that encourage energy recovery from hazardous materials or materials that might otherwise be disposed of as solid waste.
The 2011 non-hazardous secondary material (NHSM) final rule under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) identifies which non-hazardous secondary materials are, or are not, solid wastes when burned in combustion units. This determines which Clean Air Act emission standards a combustion unit is required to meet.
Waste minimization, the term employed in the RCRA statute, is defined to include both source reduction and certain types of environmentally sound recycling. EPA''s highest priority is to achieve reductions through source reduction. However, if this is not achievable, then environmentally sound recycling is also an Agency priority.
Recycling activities closely resembling conventional waste treatment activities (such as burning for energy recovery) do not constitute waste minimization. Also, treatment for the purposes of destruction or disposal is not part of waste minimization, but is, rather, an activity that occurs after the opportunities for waste minimization have been pursued.
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