Development and main focus of the Institute of Waste Management at BOKU

Until 1993 waste management at BOKU was only a small subarea in terms of teaching being part of the water management lead by the civil engineer Werner Lengyel. The cornerstone for an independent development and waste oriented research was created with the establishment of a special professorship.

The initial focuses were separate waste collection and composting, followed by a period covered by the intense discussion carried out throughout Europe of thermal - vs. biological waste treatment. This lead to the development of two new fields of research at the institute:

The mechanical-biological waste treatment and the disposal and exploitation of combustions residues (slag). The background of the discussion was the fact, that untreated deposited waste from  so called “landfills for reactor waste” contributes significantly to emissions of the greenhouse gas methane.  The necessity of a waste pre-treatment attained legal status in Austria in the year 1996. The scientific foundation for this was established by the researches of the institute. However this target was only fully implemented more than 10 years later. Globally speaking landfills for reactor waste are today still status quo. Landfill gas and its disposal was therefore the next ABF-focus research.

Today the institute has a recognized research position in the field of biological methane oxidation beyond the borders of Europe. In 1995 the possibility of waste experiments and laboratory analysis was established by relocating to own facilities.

The initialization of the field of waste analytics:

The steady increasing amount of waste produced was a highly interesting business area for the disposal industry. Questioning the causes, starting with a sustainable development of the products all the way to its disposal, only happens through us researches at this time.

The analysis of organic substances with the help of modern methods enabled the establishment of two new and important applied fields of research at the turn of the millennium: the optimization of the process of biological treatment methods as a function of the target, mineralization, in the case of a subsequent landfilling, a humus composition in case of the production of a high quality compost, as well as the exploration of the sink function of the soil for CO2.

You can find out more about our research here...