Circular Landfill Management Using Renewable Energy

I had already written about this idea before. I keep seeing Europe complaining about their raw material deficiency. They need to develop new technologies and new approaches for recycling and mining. Within the mass of Europe continent, they can find everything they require. Additionally, every nation on earth would benefit from the technology developed which is a good exporting option as well.

Labor intense landfill sorting should be replaced by automated pulverization and sorting process. Mimic human digestive system. Everything we eat is chewed and swallowed then go through digestive organs in succession. The landfill sorting system will not use any chemicals to break up the particles. Only mechanical grinding will be used including ultrasound waves. Different materials have different hardness and sound absorption which help the separation process. The pulverized particles will be scanned by sensors to detected their content to direct them into separate collector bins. Pulverization process would be energy intense. However, decreasing the particle sizes speed up further purification processes and lower the energy requirement of the later stages.

I propose the use of specially designed wind turbines to supply the energy requirement for the sorting process. Wind has kinetic energy. Grinding is a mechanical process. Therefore, there is no need to convert the wind energy into electricity and convert electricity into mechanical energy again. The wind turbines would be used to generate pressurized air which would power the air powered grinders. As a result no need for copper, rare earth elements and semiconductors for the grinding section of the process. The electric required for the rest of the processes can be supplied from the grid.

The production rate of the Circular Landfill Management system would depend on the wind speed. The objective of this system is to recycle the unprocessed landfills with minimum infrastructure and labor with maximum automation. Easy scalability of the platform will have huge effect on the economy. The future landfills would be moved to locations where there is more sustained wind for increased processing rate.

Unlike mining that has to deal with a lot of impurities, landfills are full of what we need in the first place. They are also much closer to the civilization lowering the transportation cost. Finally, clearing up the landfills reduce the environmental pollution.