Workshop - IWWG Thermal Treatments Task Group Sandpit I & II
Advanced Thermal Treatments at a Crossroads: Breakthrough Technologies or Unfulfilled Promises?

Organised by: IWWG Thermal Treatments Task Group - Umberto Arena, Lidia Lombardi, Francesco Parrillo (IT), Massimiliano Materazzi, Tarek Rashwan (UK)

A modern integrated solid waste management system should maximize resource recovery, given that, in a life-cycle approach, energy or fuel/chemicals recovery from waste allows decreasing consumption of fossil fuels and overall emissions from all current conversion systems. Advanced thermal treatment systems can contribute to these goals, and among them, gasification stands out as a particularly promising approach, enabling efficient energy and material recovery, while other emerging technologies offer complementary opportunities to enhance performance and sustainability. Despite these potentials, significant challenges remain across commercial/economic, policy/regulatory, technological, and environmental/sustainability dimensions. 

This "sandpit" style workshop will bring together researchers, industry experts, and stakeholders to explore these advanced thermal treatment approaches, analyse challenges and lessons from recent project successes and failures. The aim is to collaboratively produce a summary report and distilled document that highlights the current state of advanced thermal waste treatment and identifies key future trends.

Discussions will take place at four roundtables focusing on different aspects of thermal treatments:

• Commercial/Economic
• Policy/Regulatory
• Technological
• Environmental/Sustainability

Each roundtable will be moderated by an expert in the relevant field. During each round, participants will join one of the four roundtables and then move to a different table for the next round. The rotation will be organised so that, by the end of the four rounds, each participant will have taken part in the discussions at all four roundtables, contributing their perspectives and exchanging ideas across the different themes.

As the workshop has a maximum capacity of 30 participants, we kindly invite any interested symposium attendees to complete the following pre-registration/expression of interest form: Workshop Pre-registration / Expression of Interest Form

AGENDA:

• Introduction (by Umberto Arena and Massimiliano Materazzi)
• First round of sandpit discussions
• Second round of sandpit discussions
  
  

16:15 - 16:45      Coffee break

• Third round of sandpit discussions
• Fourth round of sandpit discussions
• Sharing of key insights and discussion outcomes/Conclusions (by Tarek Rashwan and Francesco Parrillo)