REV. CHIM. (Bucharest) ♦ 65 ♦ No. 3 ♦ 2014 http://www.revistadechimie.ro 257 Assessment of Alternatives for RMSW Treatment for Valcea County, Romania STEFAN-ION CIORANU 1 *, MIRCEA GRIGORIU 1 , MARCO RAGAZZI 2 , ELENA CRISTINA RADA 2 , GABRIELA IONESCU 2 1 Politechnica University of Bucharest, Faculty of Power Engineering, Department of Energy Production and Use, 313 Splaiul Independenei , 060042, Bucharest, Romania 2 University of Trento – Department of Civil Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, Via Mesiano 77, 38123 Trento, Italy This paper presents an analysis of the current and future situation in terms of waste management in Vâlcea County, Romania. Two alternatives for waste landfilling are presented: co-incineration in cement kilns and incineration in a proposed incineration plant. A bio-drying facility is also suggested as an option for residual municipal solid waste pre-treatment before energy recovery. Results regarding population, waste evolution, quantities of generated residual municipal waste and solid recovered fuel are presented. Estimations of lower heating values were performed through indirect methods. Finally, preliminary energy and economical balances were established. Keywords: waste, incineration, solid recovered fuel, elementary composition, energy balance * email: ionut.cioranu@yahoo.com Table 1 VÂLCEA COUNTY: POPULATION AND MSW Fig. 1 Composition of MSW – present situation On the 1 st of January 2007 Romania became a member of the European Union [1]. This recently obtained status involves both rights and obligations derived from the EU treaties and legislations. In terms of waste management, Landfill Directive 99/ 31/CE implies major changes, requesting the diversion of biodegradable waste from landfilling with 50% by 2017 [2]. This way, the implementation of selective collection (SC), of materials recycling and waste-to-energy (WtE) technologies is needed. The purpose is to minimize as much as possible the harmful effects on the environment (air, surface water, groundwater, soil) and on human health. In light of the above this paper presents a study for Vâlcea County, regarding the current and future situation of waste management. The energetic and economical balances are developed considering the EU waste management targets. Results and discussions Materials and methods Vâlcea County is one of the 41 counties, having 2 municipalities, 9 towns and 78 communes, and is located in the south of Romania. The population in this county is about 406,752 inhabitants producing about 149,200 t of municipal solid waste (MSW) per year. Presently, approximately 85% of produced MSW is landfilled [3]. Table 1 shows the values regarding population and MSW generated for the present (year 2013) and future (year 2017) situations [3].SC is implemented in some parts of the county, achieving about 10%. The waste SC is low (about 4%) for the materials with high calorific value (LHV) and only a little part of the food waste (about 15%) is collected in order to be treated in a pilot composting plant [2]. Figure 1 displays the composition of MSW in Vâlcea County. These data are consistent with the MSW composition generated in Romania, where the organic fraction varies between 40 and 50% [2,4-6]. The actual capacity of treating biodegradable fraction and the lack of recycling facilities leads to failure in achieving the targets imposed through European and local legislation. However, the municipality started to implement an Integrated MSW System (ISWMS) in order to comply with the 2017 targets [3]. The SC targets, that must be achieved, are presented in table 2. Based on the ultimate analysis of each fraction of the generated waste [7-10], an estimation of LHV using indirect methods was performed. In the scientific literature, there can be found several expressions used for its calculation [7,11]: