The assessment of reuse potential for municipal solid waste and refuse-derived fuel incineration ashes

Resource recovery plants with a waste presorting process prior to incinerat ion have not been successfully implemented in many developing countries. At least two engineering projects were fully assessed in Taiwan for the possi ble installation of presorting facilities in order to increase the potentia l efficiency of material and energy recovery for municipal incinerators. Bu t the reuse potential of incineration ash in light of toxicity leaching and compressive strength of concrete mixture remains unclear due to the lack o f comprehensive evaluation for the ash characteristics. A comparative study for assessing the reuse potential of incineration ash based on two types o f incineration processes was therefore performed in this study. The experim ental results indicate that fly ash collected from both types of incinerati on processes is classified as a hazardous material because of their leachab le metal contents. For the reuse of bottom ash as fine aggregate in concret e mixing, the refuse-derived fuel (RDF) incineration process shows higher p otential than the solid waste incineration process without any presorting u nit. But the concrete mixture with RDF incineration ash still presents a lo wer compressive strength by 23% as compared with the concrete made with con ventional aggregate. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.