What does chemical treatment or combustion mean?
Chemical treatment or combustion is the controlled burning of waste materials to create heat that destroys the waste and produces heat energy ash. The volume of waste is reduced in size by 90%. The ash is often taken to an ash landfill for disposal; sometimes it is used in road construction. Metals are removed from the ash with a magnet and delivered to a recycler. The heat produced by the combustion process is used to boil water, which produces steam. The steam is used to heat or cool buildings, generate electricity, or power a manufacturing process such as food processing, papermaking, or leather tanning. Some combustion facilities use mechanical separation of municipal waste to reduce the amount of non-burnable items entering the furnace. When this is done, the remaining burnable fraction is commonly referred to as refuse-derived fuel, or RDF.
