Yet here too we can see opportunity when we consider a landfill not purely as a closed repository for waste, but as a potential material and energy source that can be incorporated back into the loop, after which the site can then be redeveloped. This, in a nutshell, is the principle of "Enhanced landfill mining."
After years of thorough research (collaboration between academia, governments, businesses and local players), the Machiels Group deemed the time ripe to take the next step of the 'Closing-the-Circle Project' from the R&D stage towards a first demo plant on an industrial scale.
This demo plant, for processing 30,000 tons of RDF per year, is envisaged on their REMO site in Houthalen, one of the larger repositories in Flanders. This installation provides the controlled excavation of the waste, this to be sorted out further (recyclable fractions are recovered), and to be further processed into a fuel (RDF or Refuse-Derived Fuel). This RDF is then converted by means of a gas plasma installation into a syngas, which is further processed to hydrogen. Plasmarok, the solid residual fraction which comes out of the plant, may also be processed further and can be upgraded to a substitute for cement or processed into tiles, roof tiles, and in the future also into insulating material.