Your city council
just tasked you with developing a proposal to co-locate a conversion technology
(CT) project with an existing transfer station or materials recovery facility
(MRF). Your city [you fill in the name] will provide 500 tons per day of its
residential black-bin wastestream. A neighboring jurisdiction has agreed to
provide a minimum of 500 tons of “nonresidential” waste from its commercial and
industrial sectors. Both cities have requested that the “facility” be able to
process construction-and-demolition waste.
Since your city
has a policy that it will only utilize CTs that don’t conflict with source
reduction and recycling, you need to assess processes that allow you to
reasonably recover any additional recyclables and prepare the best possible
feedstock for the CTs.
You have one
month to prepare your oral presentation and all written supporting technical
documentation and detailed calculations, which include:
* the proposed project design that specifies
the preprocessing requirements and develops the flowcharts and the site plan for
the transfer station/MRF that will also be the “preprocessing” front end for CTs
to be showcased as “demonstration facilities”;
* a proposed “process flow diagram” of your
process or processes that would create the feedstock for the two selected
demonstration technologies (entailing a description of the unit process or
processes that will be utilized); and
* for each unit process, a description of
the wastestream materials being fractionated and the resultant split of
materials. To do this, you will use the size distribution materials that have
been provided
Are
You Having Fun Yet?
How prepared do
you feel that you and your staff are for accomplishing such heady tasks? Better
still, how well off will your staff be five years down the road when you or some
of your most experienced people have headed off into well-earned
retirement?
Today’s workforce
is evaporating before our eyes ... and that’s only one of the challenges we’re
facing. While environmental concerns dominated the landscape for the last two
decades, societal needs paced by energy and infrastructure challenges have moved
to the fore, adding to the complexity of MSW management.
These concerns
prompted the California Integrated Waste Management Board to task Dr. Eugene
Tseng, UCLA professor and member of MSW Management’s editorial advisory
board, to develop a training course that would not only capture the wisdom of
the past but explore emerging possibilities as well.
Under the aegis
of UCLA’s Engineering Extension program, Tseng’s program plan for the course,
Principles of Recycling and MSW Management, is as follows: (1)
What is MSW?; (2) MSW Management and Recycling Infrastructure; (3) Regulatory
Framework for Recycling and MSW Management; (4) Introduction to Waste Reduction
and Recycling Programs; (5) Overview of MSW Technology; (6) Other Topics
[disaster debris management, education, public outreach, facilities siting,
etc.]; (7) Field Trips to Support Classroom Presentations; and, finally, (8)
Class Projects.
The co-location
situation described above was one Tseng used to challenge his first class at the
conclusion of the course’s MSW Technology module.
Experience levels
of the class members ranged from newbie to old pro, representing private as well
as public institutions, who were organized into teams to answer the
challenge.
The
implementation phase in a traditional classroom environment is complete and the
course elements are being formalized, but as it rolls out, beginning in January
2009 the program will transition to distance-learning formats that allow it to
be adapted to meet the needs of different jurisdictions and experience
levels.
MSW
Management is committed
to the program’s success, much of which depends on the involvement of MSW
professionals both here and abroad. Ongoing information will be available on our
Web site at www.mswmanagement.com.