Objectives and content

The pollution risk from residues of waste incineration is a real concern for the whole European Union and especially because of leaching of Heavy Metals. Solutions for more efficient fly ashes and slags treatments are therefore necessary.

The main objective of the project is to develop validated tools for the automatic calculation of Heavy Metals (HM) repartition through the different (gas, liquid and solid) flows of incineration processes. That will enable to identify the most efficient recovery means for HM reduction in the solid residue.

For this purpose a process configuration has been identified, aimed at controlling the HM flows and their recovery in a concentrated single drain. This basic configuration includes a direct oxydative combustion, a separated melting of slags and fly ashes, a condensation of HM vapors from the melting oven, a high temperature filtration and a recycling of the insoluble part (containing HM) of gas neutralization products.

The programme will comprise:

- Theoretical calculations based on equilibrium laws to simulate the distribution of HM in the successive steps of the process: different chemicals forms and phases for each HM.

- Validation of the theoretical results by those provided by industrial operations as well as by demonstration runs on adapted existing pilots plants.

- Integration of the equilibrium laws and thermodynamical data into a model aimed at calculating the thermal and material balances for each individual step of the process.

- This model will be used and validated to describe HM behaviour throughout the complete process on different configurations including different options for each step.

That will provide a generic tool for incineration process expertise and optimization with regard to the reduction of HM emissions.