Utilizing waste heat from metal industry for drying of organic waste

Abstract

Growing generation of organic waste is a real problem all over the world. This is specifically expressed in the developed countries because the amounts of the waste are larger. Therefore, it implies problem connected with organic waste disposal. In the modern society it is prohibited to dump the waste on landfills. It was necessary to find the solution how to deal with this situation.One of the options is delivering of the organic waste to the burning facilities. In this way it is possible to utilize energy from the waste for district heating systems or making electricity. On the other hand, the problem of waste disposal would be solved. However, this is not so easy. Water amount inside the food waste is very high. This means that energy content of food waste is pretty low which requires a certain amount of plastic and paper with higher energy content to burn it out. Drying of the food waste would increase its energy content and reduce necessary amount of plastic and paper. Instead of it these components can be used for recycling.The idea is that drying process could be generated with utilizing waste energy from metal industry. The amounts of the waste energy in this industry are very large and possibilities of using them for drying are great. This paper focuses on checking available waste energy sources in silicon and aluminum production plants because Norway has well-developed this particular field of metal industry. Also, the issues of the amounts of the food waste in Norway, technical solutions for drying of the waste, as well as CO2 foot print calculation are included in this paper.