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 incineration have not been successfully implemented in many developing countries. At least two engineering projects were fully assessed in Taiwan for the possible installation of presorting facilities in order to increase the potential efficiency of material and energy recovery for municipal incinerators. But the reuse potential of incineration ash in light of toxicity leaching and compressive strength of concrete mixture remains unclear due to the lack of comprehensive evaluation for the ash characteristics. A comparative study for assessing the reuse potential of incineration ash based on two types of incineration processes was therefore performed in this study. The experimental results indicate that fly ash collected from both types of incineration processes is classified as a hazardous material because of their leachable metal contents. For the reuse of bottom ash as fine aggregate in concrete mixing, the refuse-derived fuel (RDF) incineration process shows higher potential than the solid waste incineration process without any presorting unit. But the concrete mixture with RDF incineration ash still presents a lower compressive strength by 23% as compared with the concrete made with conventional aggregate. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.