The MSW incinerator as a monitoring tool for waste management

For efficient waste management, instruments are needed to assess the impact of legislative, organizational, and technical measures on the waste stream. Since waste incineration plants transform heterogeneous wastes into more homogeneous residues, they are well suited for easy and cost-effective monitoring of the chemical composition of wastes. A method is proposed to determine changes in the chemical waste composition by analyzing a single incineration residue only. Procedures are presented to (a) select the appropriate incineration residue to be analyzed, (b) determine the minimum sampling frequency of the residue, and (c) analyze the chemical composition of municipal solid waste routinely with a given accuracy. Field measurements demonstrate that, with a reasonable effort, the annual mean concentration of Zn and Cd in MSW can be determined with an uncertainty of less than 10% and of Cu and Pb with less than 20%, respectively. The proposed method, which can be extended to nonmetals also, serves as a base to use waste incineration plants as a routine tool for quality control in waste management.