Stephen Burnley

• The Open University

A life cycle assessment was carried out to investigate the environmental benefits of removing dense plastics from household waste before burning the waste in an energy from waste (EfW) facility. Such a process was found to improve the climate change impacts of the waste management system by 75% and the non-renewable resource depletion impacts by 18...

A life cycle assessment was carried out to assess a selection of the factors influencing the environmental impacts and benefits of incinerating the fraction of municipal waste remaining after source-separation for reuse, recycling, composting or anaerobic digestion. The factors investigated were the extent of any metal and aggregate recovery from t...

Purpose The aim of this research was to determine the optimum way of recovering energy from the biodegradable fractions of municipal waste. A part-life cycle study was carried out on the following wastes: paper, food waste, garden waste, wood, non-recyclable mixed municipal waste and refuse-derived fuel. The energy recovery processes considered wer...

The use of Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) was investigated in an exercise using a panel of local residents and stakeholders to assess the options for managing waste paper on the Isle of Wight. Seven recycling, recovery and disposal options were considered by the panel who evaluated each option against seven environmental, financial and soc...

Waste management policies and legislation in many developed countries call for a reduction in the quantity of biodegradable waste landfilled. Anaerobic digestion, combustion and gasification are options for managing biodegradable waste while generating renewable energy. However, very little research has been carried to establish the overall energy...

The move from landfill-based to resource-based waste management systems requires a greater knowledge of the composition of municipal solid waste. This paper draws together the findings of municipal solid waste (MSW) compositional surveys undertaken in the United Kingdom. The results from recent surveys show a good agreement over the composition of...

As the waste industry continues to move from a disposal-based system to one based on a combination of recovery options, the need for information on the composition of waste increases and this is reflected by the amount of information on the physical composition of municipal solid wastes that is now available. However, there is far less information...

In many regions and countries, national and international targets have been set for municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling, recovery and diversion from landfill. To develop and implement effective strategies to meet these targets requires reliable information on the composition of all parts of the MSW stream. Previous studies on the composition of M...

Current and proposed European Union (EU) regulations require the residual material from municipal solid waste incineration to be characterised prior to disposal. X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) provides a rapid and non-destructive technique for analysing such materials.

All incineration and other thermal treatment technologies produce flue gas treatment residues (FGTR) that require specialised treatment and disposal. In the United Kingdom the FGTR arising from municipal solid waste incineration is classified as a hazardous (special) waste. This is primarily due to the irritant properties of chloride, but also due...

Starting from the year 2010, students of The Open University who enroll on the residential school module Engineering in Action have undertaken a team project focused on end-of-life product design. This highlights the engineer's role in promoting sustainable futures, which is now a feature of all engineering programmes. The team aspect of the projec...

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