Waste Incineration and Heavy Metal Emission—Laboratory Tests

Danuta Król, Przemysław Motyl () and Sławomir Poskrobko
Additional contact information
Danuta Król: Faculty of Energy and Environmental Engineering, Silesian University of Technology, 14-100 Gliwice, Poland
Przemysław Motyl: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Technology and Humanities in Radom, 26-600 Radom, Poland
Sławomir Poskrobko: Faculty of Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences, Białystok University of Technology, 15-351 Białystok, Poland

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 21, 1-18

Abstract: The main sources of environmental pollution with heavy (ecotoxic) metals include industry, including utility and municipal power engineering, but also waste incineration plants. Fuel shortages and their constantly growing prices raise concerns that energy will be commonly obtained from waste outside of installations intended for this purpose (i.e., outside waste incineration plants). The greatest concern stems from the risk of burning waste in low-power boilers—domestic boilers. Waste incineration plants and utility power plants are equipped with flue gas cleaning installations (FGD), but low-power boilers are not. The exhaust gases are directly introduced into the atmosphere, which results in the introduction into the air of, inter alia, toxic heavy metals. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct activities aimed at retaining ecotoxic metals in the solid–slag residue. The paper presents the results of laboratory tests of the emission capacity of Cd, Cu, Zn bound in various chemical forms—nitrates (V), chlorides and sulphates (VI). The tests were carried out at 1073 K, 1173 K and 1273 K. It was found that the emissivity of metals increased with increasing temperature. This is innovative as there are no reports of experiments with pure forms of metal salts. The advantage of this type of research is the lack of influence from other factors, apart from temperature, on metal emissions. To check the possibility of reducing metal emissions, additives (bauxite, dolomite, V 2 O 5 ) immobilized in a solid residue were tested. The mechanism of action of each of the additives to limit the mobility of metals was different. The use of V 2 O 5 for this purpose is new. The additives kept the metals solid in the residue, but their effect was different for each of the metals. The effectiveness of the tested additives was checked in the same temperature conditions, burning waste such as: rubber, sewage sludge and SRF fuel from waste. The effect of the additives depended on the type of waste, type of metal and the furnace temperature. If the additive effectively retained metals, then their amounts in the ashes were higher by several to several dozen percent in relation to the amount in the ashes remaining after waste incineration without additives. The results of the experiment with waste are open to research on the influence of other factors (except temperature) on the emissivity of Cd, Cu, Zn and the possibility of its reduction. The next step will be to verify the effects of laboratory tests in real conditions.

Keywords: combustion; emission; heavy metals; waste (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/21/8130/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/21/8130/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:21:p:8130-:d:959510

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().