Heavy metal mobility and valuable contents of processed municipal solid waste incineration residues from Southwestern Germany

•Processed MSWI residues were characterized, which has been seldom studied.•The environmental risks of different size fractions of the waste were evaluated.•Studied MSWI residues can serve as urban mines of precious metals (high Pt, Au) As conventional end-of-life disposal, municipal solid waste (MS...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Waste management (Elmsford) 2018-09, Vol.79, p.735-743
Main Authors: Abramov, Sergey, He, Jing, Wimmer, Dominik, Lemloh, Marie-Louise, Muehe, E. Marie, Gann, Benjamin, Roehm, Ellen, Kirchhof, Rainer, Babechuk, Michael G., Schoenberg, Ronny, Thorwarth, Harald, Helle, Thomas, Kappler, Andreas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Garbage
Germany
Heavy metals
Incineration
Incineration residue
Metals, Heavy
Municipal solid waste
Precious metals
Refuse Disposal
Sequential extraction
Solid Waste
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•Processed MSWI residues were characterized, which has been seldom studied.•The environmental risks of different size fractions of the waste were evaluated.•Studied MSWI residues can serve as urban mines of precious metals (high Pt, Au) As conventional end-of-life disposal, municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration residues can be problematic due to potential release of toxic compounds into the environment. Using municipal solid waste incineration residues as urban-mine of valuable metals (e.g. precious metals) could provide a trash-to-treasure possibility. The objectives of the study are to (i) determine the contents of different contaminant metallic elements (Zn, Cu, Ba, Pb, Cr and Ni) in four size fractions of MSW incineration residues and discuss their mobility potential by using the modified BCR sequential extraction method; (ii) investigate the level of valuable critical contents (precious metals, rare earth elements, etc.) in these wastes. We also characterized mineralogy and elemental composition of four different grain size fractions (0–0.5, 0.5–2.0, 2.0–4.0 and 4.0–16.0 mm) of processed municipal solid waste incineration residue (PIR) from the Southwestern region of Germany, using X-ray fluorescence, X-ray powder diffraction and different spectroscopic techniques. Among all studied size fractions, grains smaller than 2 mm contained higher amounts of total extractable heavy metals in most cases. The most important finding of the study is that the total contents of Cu, Au and Pt in the incineration residues reached economically profitable levels (5.1 g/kg, 21.69 mg/kg and 17.45 mg/kg, respectively).
ISSN:0956-053X
1879-2456
DOI:10.1016/j.wasman.2018.08.010