Resource Recovery from Hazardous Waste – the Case of Msw Incineration Fly Ashes

(2014) " Resource recovery from hazardous waste – the case of MSW incineration fly ashes " In: Proceedings " 4th International Conference Industrial and Hazardous Waste Management", 2.-5. SUMMARY: In the European Union almost 78 million tons of waste are annually combusted in Waste-to-Energy plants. Solid residues generated thereby contain altogether about 72,000 t/a of Zn, of which more than 50 % accumulates in air pollution control residues. Intensive research activities aiming at Zn recovery from such residues recently resulted in a large scale Zn recovery plant at a Swiss waste incinerator. By acidic leaching and subsequent electrolysis this technology (FLUREC) allows to generate metallic Zn of purity >99.9%. In the present paper the economic viability of the FLUREC technology with respect to Zn recovery from different solid residues of waste incineration has been investigated and subsequently been classified according to the mineral resource classification scheme of McKelvey. The results of the analysis demonstrate that recovery costs are generally higher than the current market price of Zn, which implies that none of the identified Zn resources present in incineration residues can be economically extracted and thus cannot be classified as a reserve. Only for about 7,200 t/a of Zn an extraction would be marginally economic, meaning that recovery costs are only slightly (less than 50%) higher than the current market price for Zn. For the remaining Zn resources production costs are between 3 to 5 times (10,800 t/a Zn) and 20 to 80 times (54,000 t/a Zn) higher than the market price.