Municipal solid waste staged for sorting and processing.

Waste to Value · Municipal Solid Waste

A city's waste, returned to value.

One proprietary low-temperature process converts a city's sorted municipal solid waste into industrial carbon, fuel oil, and potable water, with nothing sent to landfill.

Download the brochure The technology →
The opportunity

A liability on one side. Carbon demand on the other.

A city of one million people generates about 1.22 million tons of municipal solid waste each year, and pays to bury it. Landfills are one of the largest anthropogenic methane sources.

At the same time, demand for industrial carbon and fuel keeps climbing. The same waste a city pays to dispose of is a dense carbon carrier.

TiPs turns that liability into product. Tipping fees a city already pays become an input-side revenue line that neither tires nor coal can offer.

A city pays to bury this waste. TiPs turns that liability into carbon, fuel, and water.

1.22M Tons of municipal solid waste generated each year by a city of one million.
2B+ Tons of MSW generated worldwide each year, heading to 3.8 billion by 2050.
270K Tons of carbon recovered each year for concrete and steel.
337M Litres of potable water recovered each year, returned to the city.
The technology

The TiPs process

The Thermal-static internal Pyrophinic system (TiPs) is a sealed, low-temperature, vacuum-driven thermal mechanical depolymerization process. After sorting and drying, it converts municipal waste into carbon, fuel oil, and potable water.

Feedstock Sorted and dried municipal solid waste
Outputs Industrial carbon, fuel oil, syngas, potable water, mineral residue
10,000+ Hours operated at full scale across feedstocks: tires, coal, oil sands. TRL 8.
24/7 Continuous feed operation, self-powered after a one-time grid startup.
100% Of every ton of feedstock becomes product, recovered water, or sold residue.
Zero Material to landfill. Every fraction is sold, recovered, or used internally.
Feedstock · Municipal Solid Waste

How it works here

A city of one million people generates about 1.22 million tons of municipal solid waste each year. Fed to a single six-unit TiPs facility, after sorting and drying, 880,000 tons of dry feedstock becomes carbon, fuel oil, and potable water. Nothing is landfilled.

Landfills are one of the largest anthropogenic methane sources. TiPs takes that material out of the ground entirely, with syngas running the dryer and the unit in a closed loop.

Outputs: industrial carbon, 61M gallons of fuel oil, 337M litres of potable water, and mineral residue to cement. Modular and distributed, deployable at one landfill site or several, sized to the city.

The TiPs system behind this project is the same one validated independently on tire feedstock (Tokai Carbon / Sid Richardson analysis, see the End-of-Life Tires page). Feedstock-specific validation is completed as part of each project business case, built on the assay of the actual feedstock.

What a ton of dry MSW becomes

Select a product stream to see its uses and the market it sells into.

  • Carbon · 31%
  • Fuel oil · 25%
  • Mineral residue · 24%
  • Process gas · 20%

Carbon · 31%

Robust industrial-grade carbon recovered from the dry feedstock, sold into bulk materials markets.

Use cases

  • Advanced concrete
  • Soil enrichment and agriculture
  • Metallurgical carbon for steel
  • Bulk industrial carbon

Size of the industry

  • About 4 billion tons of cement are produced each year, a vast outlet for affordable bulk carbon.
  • Steelmaking consumes more than 500 million tons of metallurgical coke a year, a market clean carbon can enter.

Fuel oil · 25%

Industrial oil recovered from the hydrocarbon fraction, sold as a robust industrial grade.

Use cases

  • Industrial heating
  • Marine and bunker fuel
  • Refining feedstock
  • Diluent blending

Size of the industry

  • The global fuel oil market is worth roughly $190B a year.
  • Marine shipping alone burns more than 300 million tons of bunker fuel a year.

Mineral residue · 24%

The mineral fraction of the waste, recovered as a feed for cement and construction materials.

Use cases

  • Supplementary cementitious material
  • Road base and aggregate
  • Concrete filler

Size of the industry

  • Supplementary cementitious materials are a global market worth more than $17B a year.
  • About 4 billion tons of cement are produced each year, a vast outlet for affordable bulk carbon.

Process gas · 20%

Syngas captured during processing. It runs the dryer and the unit in a closed loop, with recovered moisture returned as potable water.

Use cases

  • Runs feedstock drying
  • Powers the facility
  • Closed loop after startup
  • Zero external fuel

Size of the industry

  • Not sold: it replaces purchased fuel, so the plant runs with zero external fuel after startup.
  • The recovered moisture comes back as potable water: 337M litres a year, roughly the daily water needs of 6,000 people.

Modeled output for sorted, dried municipal waste, before recovered moisture. Composition varies widely by city and sorting; each project is built on the actual waste characterization.

The products

Three product streams from one facility.

TiPs recovers commercial-grade products from a mixed feedstock. Because municipal waste carries contamination, the carbon and oil are sold as robust industrial grades rather than tire or coal grades. The model is built on product value.

Carbon

Industrial carbon from the dry feedstock, sold into bulk materials markets.

  • Advanced concrete
  • Soil enrichment and agriculture
  • Metallurgical carbon for steel
  • Bulk industrial carbon

Fuel oil

Industrial oil from the hydrocarbon fraction, with established offtake markets.

  • Industrial heating
  • Marine and bunker fuel
  • Refining feedstock
  • Diluent blending

Water & minerals

Potable water captured from the feedstock moisture, plus mineral residue.

  • Potable water to the city
  • Mineral residue to cement
  • Aggregate
  • Closed-loop process gas

Where the feedstock carries moisture, TiPs captures it and returns it as potable water rather than venting it.

TiPs vs the incumbents

How TiPs compares

Municipal waste has two incumbent routes: burn it or bury it. TiPs replaces both with material recovery and recovered water.

TiPsPyrolysisMass-burn incinerationLandfill
Process Sealed, low-temperature depolymerization of sorted, dried waste.High-temperature thermochemical cracking, 400 to 800C.High-temperature combustion, 850C and above.No processing. Waste buried in the ground.
Products Carbon, fuel oil, potable water, mineral residue.Fuel oil, low-grade char, syngas.Heat and power, with fly ash and bottom ash.None. The material value is lost.
Material value Preserved and sold into industrial markets.Partially destroyed, lower-value byproducts.Destroyed in combustion.Stranded and lost.
Environmental Zero waste to landfill, water recovered, no combustion.Energy-intensive, char disposal issues.Dioxin and NOx emissions, hazardous fly ash.Methane, leachate, and permanent land use.
Deployment Modular, distributed, at one landfill or several.Large centralized plants.Large centralized plants.Permanent land use and long-term liability.
880K t/yr Dry feedstock processed across six TiPs units at one facility.
TRL 8 Technology readiness proven across 10,000+ hours of full-scale operation.
Modular Deployable at one landfill site or several, sized to the city.

Take the full project with you.

SENS delivers waste-to-value solutions at scale. Whether you represent a municipality, a government, a waste operator, or an investment fund, we invite you to explore what TiPs can do with municipal solid waste in your region.

SENS · Municipal Solid Waste Full project brochure, including the project economics (PDF)
More project types

One process, four projects

End-of-Life Tires

End-of-life tires become tread-grade N330 carbon black, high-aromatic oil, and closed-loop process gas.

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Coal to Clean Carbon

Run-of-mine coal becomes solid industrial carbon, fuel oil, and process gas, before any combustion.

Explore →

Clean Carbon to Power

TiPs runs in front of the boiler: 400 MW of cleaner baseload power plus exportable fuel oil from one line.

Explore →