LABORATORY-SCALE STUDIES ON GASEOUS EMISSIONS GENERATED BY THE INCINERATION OF AN ARTIFICIAL AUTOMOTIVE SHREDDER RESIDUE PRESENTING A CRITICAL COMPOSITION

Car manufacturers must eliminate automotive shredder residues (ASR). T wo ways of incineration are of interest: at 850 degrees C in municipal waste incinerators or at higher temperatures, above 1100 degrees C in cement plants. These processes reduce the mass and the volume of wast e to be disposed of in landfills and energy recovery might be possible . Regulations govern the emission of gaseous effluents to control envi ronmental risk. To determine gaseous effluents from a pilot sacle or a n industrial incineration plant, an artificial ASR was made by mixing three representative organic polymers present in the real ASR, namely polyvinylchloride, polyurethane and rubber. This mixture was incinerat ed at 850 and 1100 degrees C in laboratory experiments and the analyse s of the principal gaseous effluents such as carbon oxides, nitrogen o xides, volatile organic compounds, hydrochloric and hydrocyanic acids and sulphur compounds are presented and discussed. Lastly, in order to simulate artificial ASR behaviour, the composition of the combustion gases at equilibrium was calculated using a Gibbs energy minimisation code. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.