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Title: Urban Mining: Quality and quantity of recyclable and recoverable material mechanically and physically extractable from residual waste

Journal Article · · Waste Management

Highlights: • Material recycling and recovery from residual waste by physical and mechanical process has been investigated. • About 6% of recyclable can be extracted by NIR and 2-3Dimension selector. • Another 2% of construction materials can be extracted by adopting modified soil washing process. • Extracted material quality is quite high even some residual heavy metal have been detected by leaching test. - Abstract: The mechanically sorted dry fraction (MSDF) and Fines (<20 mm) arising from the mechanical biological treatment of residual municipal solid waste (RMSW) contains respectively about 11% w/w each of recyclable and recoverable materials. Processing a large sample of MSDF in an existing full-scale mechanical sorting facility equipped with near infrared and 2-3 dimensional selectors led to the extraction of about 6% w/w of recyclables with respect to the RMSW weight. Maximum selection efficiency was achieved for metals, about 98% w/w, whereas it was lower for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), about 2% w/w. After a simulated lab scale soil washing treatment it was possible to extract about 2% w/w of inert exploitable substances recoverable as construction materials, with respect to the amount of RMSW. The passing curve showed that inert materials were mainly sand with a particle size ranging from 0.063 to 2 mm. Leaching tests showed quite low heavy metal concentrations with the exception of the particles retained by the 0.5 mm sieve. A minimum pollutant concentration was in the leachate from the 10 and 20 mm particle size fractions.

OSTI ID:
22300334
Journal Information:
Waste Management, Vol. 33, Issue 12; Other Information: Copyright (c) 2013 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0956-053X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English