The municipal solid waste may also represent a resource. From this consideration was born on Thor project, a system developed by National Research Council together with the Italian Society ASSING SpA in Rome.

Thor allows you to recover and refine all the waste and turn them into materials reuse and fuel the high caloric power, without going through the bins separate collection.

This is a step beyond the collection and the simple incineration, with which the waste becomes a resource and that involves a cost decidedly inferior to that of an incinerator. Thor (Total house waste recycling) is a technology designed and developed entirely in Italy by joint research public and private, that basa on a process of refining mechanics (Meccan-refining) of waste materials, which are treated as separate from all the components profits from substances Injurious or unusable.

Like a 'mill' new generation, the plant Thor reduces waste to microscopic size, less than ten thousandths of a millimetre.

The result of the whole process is a matter homogeneous, purified by the parties and harmful content from heat, usable as fuel and comparable to a coal of good quality.

According to researchers dell'Ismn-Cnr who invented Thor A fuel used with any type of system heat

including engines running on biodiesel, steam boilers, central heating systems and plants for biomass. Indeed, the chemical characteristics of the product that is generated by refining mechanics of municipal solid waste, once removed components pollutants are quite similar to those of biomass, but compared to these are poor and sulphur-free by PAH. E 'can use the product is as solid fuel or pellettizzato or produce bio-oil engines diesel through the 'pyrolysis'. The plant is completely self-consuming part of the energy that produces and sells the rest outside.

The first plant THOR, currently in operation in Sicily, can handle up to eight tonnes per hour and has no need of a storage pending further treatment and is completely mechanical, not heat and thus is not always necessary to keep it running, and can indeed be turned on only when needed, limiting or eliminating the storage of waste and resulting odors. In addition, it was also designed as mobile plant, useful to counter emergencies and in all situations where you need to treat waste quickly, without waste and without considering spaces large, with a cost: an installation by 4 tons / hour occupies a maximum of 300 square meters and has an average cost of 2 million euro.

The plant can be mounted on trucks or on ships. In the latter case, the productivity of a plant board may rise beyond the ten tonnes per hour and fuel obtained from the treatment, made by a liquid 'pirolizzatore' can be used directly from the vessel or resold outside.

The researchers explained that "a plant Meccan-refining of medium-small size by 20 thousand tonnes of waste a year has cost around 40 euros per tonne material "," For an identical amount, a landfill will require at least 100 and an incinerator 250 euros. These costs plus those of management, and in particular the costs related to waste disposal and ash for incinerators, or management of odors and gases of landfills, both nonexistent Thor. As for the heat, waste containing waste paper produced 2,500 kilocalories per kilo, while after the refining mechanical exceed 5,300 kilocalories. "

A concrete example of its possibilities? "An area of urban inhabitants 5000 produces about 50 tonnes per day of solid waste," inform researcher. "With these Thor can get a daily average of 30 tonnes of fuel, 3 tons of glass, 2 tons between ferrous metals and non-ferrous and 1 tonne of inert, which is also rich amounts of chlorine waste, which is separated so as not to pollute the fuel. " The remaining waste is water, which is expelled in the form of steam during the process of micronization.

The product that comes from Thor is sterilized because the pressures that are generated in the mill, from 8000 to 15000 atmospheres, determine the complete destruction of bacterial flora and, furthermore, does not produce smells of fermented remains inert from a biological point of view, but fuel. "

Another interesting application by Thor, return to the islands or communities where drinking water is scarce, is the use of energy produced by thermal power a dissalatore, producing drinking water and at the same time eliminating the urban waste money.