In Korea, municipal solid waste (MSW) treatment is conducted by converting wastes into energy resources using the mechanical-biological treatment (MBT). The small size MSW to be separated from raw MSW by mechanical treatment (MT) is generally treated by biological treatment that consists of high composition of food residue and paper and so forth. In this research, the hydrothermal treatment was applied to treat the surrogate MT residue composed of paper and/or kimchi. It was shown that the hydrothermal treatment increased the calorific value of the surrogate MT residue due to increasing fixed carbon content and decreasing oxygen content and enhanced the dehydration and drying performances of kimchi. Comparing the results of paper and kimchi samples, the calorific value of the treated product from paper was increased more effectively due to its high content of cellulose. Furthermore, the change of the calorific value before and after the hydrothermal treatment of the mixture of paper and kimchi can be well predicted by this change of paper and kimchi only. The hydrothermal treatment can be expected to effectively convert high moisture MT residue into a uniform solid fuel. 1. Introduction In recent years, the global issue in the energy field is that with the combination of increasing energy consumption and the steady depletion of fossil fuel reserves, coal can only be used to last 122 years on the basis of the 2008 production rate. This, together with the global environmental issues of the appropriate treatment of increasing municipal solid waste (MSW) has prompted a global research to develop alternative energy resources as well as to reduce CO2 emissions by using renewable energy from biomass and waste [1–3]. Korean government has had an interest to employ a new MSW treatment system, namely, the mechanical biological treatment (MBT) system. The MBT system concepts for waste processing evolved in Germany and incorporated two stages of mechanical treatment (MT) and biological treatment (BT). The bigger size MSW separated by the mechanical treatment (MT) as combustible matter is processed to RDF (refuse derived fuel) for energy generation, while the separated MSW after MT (MT residue) is used for producing organic fertilizer and biogas (CH4) by employing the BT stage. The MBT system enables us to circulate resources and to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, while getting the profit by making renewable resource fuels from MSW [2] to reduce the quantity of waste sent to landfill and to increase the potential recovery of resources. This system acts as a
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