ABSTRACT
Anaerobic digestion (AD) was a technique almost exclusively reserved for biowaste of one form or another, both ethanol production and direct combustion methods were chiefly used on what might be described, in the widest sense, as energy-farmed biomass crops. The problem is that mass burn incineration, even with the energy recovery which has led to this been described in some quarters as thermal recycling, is a disposal route, very much like landfill. There has been much made of combined heat and power (CHP) installations which gained ground in the UK under successive rounds of this country's non-fossil fuel obligation (NFFO) arrangements, which effectively established a premium rate for electricity produced by renewable means. The production of waste-derived fuel (WDF) has been tried at many times and in many places, typically being seen, when applied to the total combustible component of mixed Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), as something of an intermediate between true mass burn incineration and landfill.
