Special requirements for material characterisation regarding the simulation of solid waste material processing

Modelling and simulation has gained a high importance in the field of process engineering over recent years. As the processing technology of solid waste materials becomes more complex due to the growing requirements on the products, the need for computerised simulation technologies in this area of engineering is evident. The task that derives from the heterogeneity of the waste material to be described is vectorisation of the material flow. In order to have a cluster of parameters which is capable of describing the characteristics of the material flow, the waste material has to be categorised and structured in accordance with the key processes which are used to process the material flow. To guarantee a satisfactory material description, advanced analytical concepts have to be applied to the samples taken for characterisation. As an example, the grain-size-specific water content is analysed and implemented in the model library used for the simulation. The simulation results indicate that the advanced material characterisation is more efficient than the ordinary one. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.