Refuse Derived Fuel

A type of Waste Derived Fuel, Refuse Derived Fuel or RDF has been prepared by a treatment process to produce a broad specification fuel, which is still considered to be a waste, that can be used by an EfW plant. The specification will depend upon the plant to be used, but typically at the most basic level will have had metals and inert materials removed, removal of some recyclables and limited shredding/bag splitting. More refined RDF will have had drying, shredding to a uniform size and Moisture Content reduction. At the very high end of production the RDF will move towards being a SRF.

Moving Refuse Derived Fuel and Solid Recovered Fuel from the UK abroad requires compliance with the Transfrontier Shipment Regulations (TFS) and in simple terms requires an application for movement to be made to the relevant authorities that requires a number of key measures to be satisfied before this can occur.

Fuel Specifications

We have pulled together a number of specification (spec) sheets to produce give an overall feel for the spec of Refuse Derived Fuel and Solid Recovered Fuel, as shown in the table below. In reality the spec is usually very tightly controlled by the receiving plant.

Measure	Units	Residual Waste	RDF	SRF
Net Calorific Value	MJ/kg (as received)	9 - 15	10 - 15	>18.5
Moisture	wt% (dry basis)	10 - 40	<20	<15
Biomass Content	wt% (dry basis)	>45	>65	>65
Ash Content	wt% (dry basis)	10 - 30	<20	<15
Sulphur	wt% (dry basis)	< 0.85	<0.5	<0.5
Nitrogen	wt% (dry basis)	<1.5	<0.8	<0.8
Lead	mg/kg	<200	<100	<80
Chlorine CI	wt% (dry basis)	<1.2	<0.6	<0.6
Zinc	wt% (dry basis)	<0.1
Sodium and Potassium	wt% (dry basis)	<0.8
Mercury	mg/kg	<2	<1	<0.6
Nickel	mg/kg	<200	<100	<100
Thallium	mg/kg	<20	<10	<10
Ferrous and non-ferrous metals	wt% (dry basis)	<7	<3	<1
Non combustible material	wt% (dry basis)	<15	<10	<5
Glass	wt% (dry basis)	<5	<2	<1
Dust <1mm	wt% (dry basis)	<5	<5	<5
Bulk Density (loose)	kg/m3	100 - 275	100 - 175	185
Particle Size (max dimension)	mm	500	300	<40