Abstract: Existing approaches to refuse handling are all based on historical approaches which rely on a network of refuse collection vehicles collecting waste from individual households and delivering this to a centralised landfill or MBI location. This is highly undesirable and wasteful. An alternative process is disclosed, relying on the thermal treatment of waste and like products produced or brought in to the residential property and processed within the domestic curtilage to produce fuel or other forms of energy. Thus, domestic waste will be thermally treated at the home instead of being collected by local authorities and disposed of. The waste input put material will be loaded into a domestically engineered thermal conversion unit either directly or after a pre-process such as shredding. The feedstock will be converted into fuels by a thermal treatment, such as pyrolysis.

Abstract: Thermal treatment techniques for recycling are generally very clean but their byproducts include a fine ash that may become entrained in the exhaust air plume as smoke. We therefore disclose a materials recycling apparatus comprising a heat treatment chamber for processing the material at an elevated temperature, the chamber having a vent leading via a heat exchanger to a scrubber comprising a disrupted flow path, at least one spray nozzle directed towards the disrupted flow path, and a supply of liquid (ideally water with a little detergent) to the or each spray nozzle. In this way, the entrained ash can be efficiently removed from the air flow, allowing it to be vented, and the captured ash disposed of via a waste water outlet together with the ash washed from the chamber. The flow path can be disrupted by at least one baffle plate, ideally with the spray nozzle located ahead of the baffle plate(s).

Abstract: Materials recycling processes that include a combustion stage can operate very efficiently, but can produce exhaust gases that are high in carbon monoxide and the like. We describe a treatment unit which comprises a chamber for receiving the material, a heat source for (preferably) heat-treating the material and for initiating combustion, and a gas outlet from the chamber, which allows the gas that is exhausted via the outlet to be supplied to the air inlet of an associated boiler unit, with the air inlet and a separate fuel inlet feeding a burner for combusting fuel from the fuel inlet in air from the air inlet in order to heat a transfer fluid. In this way, the unburnt elements of the gas expelled from the chamber are included in the combustion process of the boiler unit and fully combusted. A corresponding method is also disclosed.

Abstract: Existing approaches to refuse handling are all based on historical approaches which rely on a network of refuse collection vehicles collecting waste from individual households and delivering this to a centralised landfill or MBI location. This is highly undesirable and wasteful. An alternative process is disclosed, relying on the thermal treatment of waste and like products produced or brought in to the residential property and processed within the domestic curtilage to produce fuel or other forms of energy. Thus, domestic waste will be thermally treated at the home instead of being collected by local authorities and disposed of. The waste input put material will be loaded into a domestically engineered thermal conversion unit either directly or after a pre-process such as shredding. The feedstock will be converted into fuels by a thermal treatment, such as pyrolysis.