Characterization of MSW rejected fractions to fulfill RDF requirements and utilization

In order to fulfil European and Portuguese legal requirements, adequate alternatives to traditional municipal waste landfilling must be found namely concerning organic wastes and others susceptible of valorisation. According to the Portuguese Standard NP 4486:2008, refuse derived fuels (RDF) classification is based on three main parameters: lower heating value (considered as an economic parameter), chlorine content (considered as a technical parameter) and mercury content (considered as an environmental parameter). The purpose of this study was to characterize the rejected streams resulting from the mechanical treatment of unsorted municipal solid waste, from the plastic municipal selective collection and from the composting process, in order to evaluate their potential as RDF. To accomplish this purpose six sampling campaigns were performed. Chemical characterization comprised the proximate analysis – moisture content, volatile matter, ashes and fixed carbon, as well as trace elements. Physical characterization was also done. To evaluate their potential as RDF, the following parameters established in the Portuguese standard were also evaluated: heating value and chlorine content. As expected, results show that the refused stream from mechanical treatment is rather different from the selective collection rejected stream and from the rejected from the compost screening in terms of moisture, energetic matter and ashes, as well as heating value and chlorine. Preliminary data allows us to conclude that studied materials have a very interesting potential to be used as RDF. In fact, the rejected from selective collection and the one from composting have a heating value not very different from coal. Therefore, an important key factor may be the blending of these materials with others of higher heating values, after pre-processing, in order to get fuel pellets with good consistency, storage and handling characteristics and, therefore, combustion behavior.

Determinants Of Firm Terminal Value: The Perspective Of North American And European Financial Analysts

Company valuation models attempt to estimate the value of a company in two stages: (1) comprising of a period of explicit analysis and (2) based on unlimited production period of cash flows obtained through a mathematical approach of perpetuity, which is the terminal value. In general, these models, whether they belong to the Dividend Discount Model (DDM), the Discount Cash Flow (DCF), or RIM (Residual Income Models) group, discount one attribute (dividends, free cash flow, or results) to a given discount rate. This discount rate, obtained in most cases by the CAPM (Capital asset pricing model) or APT (Arbitrage pricing theory) allows including in the analysis the cost of invested capital based on the risk taking of the attributes. However, one cannot ignore that the second stage of valuation that is usually 53-80% of the company value (Berkman et al., 1998) and is loaded with uncertainties. In this context, particular attention is needed to estimate the value of this portion of the company, under penalty of the assessment producing a high level of error. Mindful of this concern, this study sought to collect the perception of European and North American financial analysts on the key features of the company that they believe contribute most to its value. For this feat, we used a survey with closed answers. From the analysis of 123 valid responses using factor analysis, the authors conclude that there is great importance attached (1) to the life expectancy of the company, (2) to liquidity and operating performance, (3) to innovation and ability to allocate resources to R&D, and (4) to management capacity and capital structure, in determining the value of a company or business in long term. These results contribute to our belief that we can formulate a model for valuating companies and businesses where the results to be obtained in the evaluations are as close as possible to those found in the stock market