Polyfunctional plants for industrial waste disposal: Capacity analysis

Abstract

Abstract

A major problem in polyfunctional plant planning concerns the search for the optimal treatment capacity in relation to the input waste mix. The capital intensive nature of polyfunctional plant projects needs, in fact, careful evaluation analyses to help investors to make wise economic decisions. In this paper a polyfunctional plant capacity analysis has been carried out, aimed to highlight the effect on investment profitability and to identify the optimal plant size. In this way a treatment capacity has been recognized which is able to pursue best values for all the considered evaluation indexes. Generally speaking an unequivocal optimal plant size occurs, which corresponds, in the examined scenario, to an incoming waste stream of about 300000 ton/year. As a result, the polyfunctional plant planning problem may be effectively faced by adopting capacity analysis as a methodological approach.