The history of refuse-derived fuels

The history of refuse-derived fuels (RDF) is reviewed from the earliest recorded use of municipal solid waste in its as-discarded form as a fuel to generate steam. (Today, such fuel is termed RDF-1.) The first use was during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, apparently in England. The technology was quickly adopted in the United States, Germany and Japan. In New York City, in the 1890's the solid waste was hand-picked to remove useful materials and the residue became another form of RDF which was burned to generate electricity. Early adaptations of English mass burn technology in the United States near the turn of the century were fraught with frustration and failure and many of the early plants were closed.

Reports of using prepared waste as a fuel in the United States during the first half of this century are reviewed, as are the early modern developments of processing wastes to various forms of RDF. Also reviewed are the early contributions of the U.S. Bureau of Solid Waste Management, the Bureau of Mines, the National Bureau of Standards, and the American Society for Testing and Materials, and early legislation leading to the U.S. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Finally, a discussion of lessons learned from this history, as they pertain to current developments, is included with a description of the rate of growth of resource recovery since 1974. The rate of growth is compared to a derived analytical expression useful for estimating future processing capacity.