Thermal treatment of stabilized air pollution control residues in a waste incinerator pilot plant. Part 2: Leaching characteristics of bottom ashes.

With the perspective of generating only one solid residue from waste incineration, co-feeding of municipal solid waste and air pollution control residues stabilized by the Ferrox process was investigated in the TAMARA pilot plant incinerator as described in Bergfeldt et al. (Waste Management Research, 22, 49-57, 2004). This paper reports on leaching from the combined bottom ashes. Batch leaching test, pH-static leaching tests, availability tests and column leaching tests were used to characterize the leaching properties. The leaching properties are key information in the context of reuse in construction or in landfilling of the combined residue. In general, the combined bottom ashes had leaching characteristics similar to the reference bottom ash, which contained no APC residue. However, As and Pb showed slightly elevated leaching from the combined bottom ashes, while Cr showed less leaching. The investigated combined bottom ashes had contents of metals comparable to what is expected at steady state after continuous co-feeding of APC residues. Only Cd and Pb were partly volatilized (30-40%) during the incineration process and thus the combined bottom ashes had lower contents of Cd and Pb than expected at steady state. Furthermore, a major loss of Hg was, not surprisingly, seen and co-feeding of Ferrox-products together with municipal solid waste will require dedicated removal of Hg in the flue gas to prevent a build up of Hg in the system. In spite of this, a combined single solid residue from waste incineration seems to be a significant environmental improvement to current technology.