Factors influencing the quality of bottom ash from municipal solid waste incineration in Switzerland - PhDData

Access database of worldwide thesis




Factors influencing the quality of bottom ash from municipal solid waste incineration in Switzerland

The thesis was published by Glauser, Andreas, in September 2022, University of Bern.

Abstract:

Sustainable waste management has always been important in Switzerland and especially waste incineration has a long tradition. Municipal solid waste (MSW) that cannot be recycled has to be thermally treated in one of the 30 MSW incineration (MSWI) plants, where mass and volume are reduced, energy is recovered and organic compounds are destroyed. About 20 wt.-% of the waste input, presently ~800’000 t/y, remain as bottom ash. Due to the high particulate metal content, metal recovery is mandatory prior to deposition. In recent years, new processes for enhanced metal recovery have been developed and implemented in Swiss MSWI plants and on landfills. However, despite these improvements ~90 wt.-% of the bottom ash remains after metal recovery, in different residual bottom ash fractions, which are deposited on Type D landfills in Switzerland.

One aspect of this thesis contributes to a better understanding of the factors influencing the composition and quality of bottom ash. Based on an existing dataset of a 10 years monitoring of raw bottom ashes from the Canton of Zürich, the influence of optimised incineration on total organic carbon (TOC) is evaluated. Thereby, lowering the concentrations of TOC in bottom ash, leads to significant quality improvements with respect to DOC emissions. On landfills, DOC emissions are crucial for the release of heavy metals, especially Cu (aq), as the mobilisation is enhanced by complexation with organic ligand. Thus, based on a combined approach of column experiments and modelling, temporal aspects of DOC emission on bottom ash landfills are studied. By including data on DOC emissions of existing bottom ash landfills, forecasts concerning the aftercare duration indicate DOC emissions

The full thesis can be downloaded at :
http://boristheses.unibe.ch/2697/1/21glauser_a.pdf


Read the last PhD tips