Germany – test burning of auto shredder residue (ASR) at Bremen‘s incineration plant

During a period of two weeks the light fraction from car scrapping, amounting to 100 tonnes per day, has been co-incinerated on a test basis. Waste Centre Denmark reports that during the test, emissions of Hg, dioxins, PCB and benzo-pyrene were measured. Furthermore, every day a slag sample was taken and analysed for alkali and soil alkali metals as well as heavy metals.



Sub-samples of the daily slag samples were mixed into weekly samples and subjected to leaching tests. Even if the shredder waste contains far more Hg (6 mg/kg) and Cd (39 mg/kg) than household waste (0.5 and 5 mg/kg, respectively), the test did not lead to increased concentration of these two metals in the slag. So they must have been transported with the flue gas to flue gas cleaning. Other metals, by contrast, were found in higher concentrations in the slag, however without this having an impact on the leaching properties. Neither did the co-incineration lead to increased emissions with the cleaned flue gas