“Solid Waste Management – Materials Recycling” is a specialization course under the “Environmental Engineering and Geo-Environment” subject direction. The course introduces to undergraduate students the basic concepts and methodological tools required to understand the processes and procedures involved in solid waste management with an emphasis on municipal solid waste.
The course syllabus aims at understanding the social, environmental and political dimensions of the solid waste management. Through the course, both the current European and the national institutional framework are presented and analyzed, as well as the available technologies and the future research objectives in this field. All actions related to solid waste management are analyzed, such as identification of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of waste, methods of storage, collection and transfer of waste. Particular emphasis is placed on solid waste separation methods, waste sorting facilities process flow charts and final treatment of solid waste. Furthermore, the principles of construction and operation of sanitary landfills are presented and analyzed and the main environmental effects of the operation of sanitary landfills: the production of leachate and biogas are discussed in depth. Through case studies, examples and exercises the quantities of leachate and biogas produced by the sanitary landfill are calculated and the management measures and the monitoring of the operation of the site until the final rehabilitation are explained.
- Introduction, basic definitions. The problem of municipal solid waste, institutional framework, existing technologies and main research directions.
- Composition, characterization and sampling of waste
- Storage, collection and waste transfer
- Solid waste sorting
- Recovery and reuse of materials
- Final processing and disposal of non-useful materials
- Processing diagrams
- Environmental problems from the uncontrolled disposal of waste.
- The profile of sanitary landfills.
- Leachate management
- Biogas management
- Examples, case studies and exercises
- Special cases (hazardous waste)
