Abstract
The aim of the paper is to introduce an interesting approach supporting facility planning in the field of waste management. There was only 23 % of municipal solid waste (MSW) thermally treated in EU 27 in 2011. Increased exploitation of its potential for energy recovery would be accompanied by massive investments to highly-efficient and reliable incineration technologies. Therefore, the challenge is to do it efficiently, so in the optimal way. Even feasibility evaluation of every intended plant providing its service for a region represents a complex task. The gate fee (charge for waste processing in the facility) represents one of the most crucial input parameters for the assessment. The gate fee is driven by technology solution, competition, market development, environmental taxation and costs of waste transport to fulfill the plant capacity. Its valid prediction thus represents a demanding task. Firstly, an advanced tool addressing logistic optimization is introduced. The key idea is to focus on the problem of competition modelling among waste-to-energy plants, landfill sites, and mechanical-biological treatment plants producing refuse-derived fuel. Then, the main theoretical concepts are discussed and followed by development of a suitable mathematical model. The goal is to obtain a minimized cost of MSW treatment for the waste producers (municipalities). The application of the developed tool is demonstrated through a case study, where uncertain parameters entering the calculation are handled by repetitive Monte Carlo simulation based on real-world data.
