Anaerobic digestion of residual municipal solid waste using biological–mechanical pre-treatment: the plant of Varennes Jarcy

Residual municipal solid waste can be treated by anaerobic digestion after a sorting process in order to remove the unwanted materials. After a mechanical sorting the quality of the final compost can hardly cope with requirements for agriculture use. In this way, a more efficient sorting process using a specific equipment that provides a combined biological and mechanical effect, has been implemented on the plant of Varennes Jarcy prior to anaerobic digestion. This paper presents the main results obtained on this plant. The reduction of biodegradable organics in particle lower than 10 mm allows a very efficient separation by screening. An additional ballistic sorting removes the remaining glass. The composition of the resulting sorted waste was close to a source-sorted organic fraction. The sorted waste exhibit methane yields comparable with raw biodegradable organics, showing that the pre-treatment had little impact on anaerobic digestion performance.