As a result of their chemical and mineralogical characteristics, bottom ashes from municipal solid waste incinerators can, in principle, be used as aggregates in the production of normal strength concrete. However, because the ashes contain concrete-damaging components, such as chlorides, sulphates and organic compounds, or excessive quantities of fines, aluminium and waste glass, recycling becomes problematic. In particular, inclusions of aluminium in the ash particles and a glass content of about 15% cause considerable cracks and spalling in concrete specimens within a very short time. The harmful substances can be reduced or removed by additional treatments, such as upstream sieving and washing, waste glass separation, and lye treatment with sodium hydroxide solution. Tests on concretes with 232 mm bottom ash as coarse aggregates indicate that the quality of the ash is actually improved by the additional processing. Thus concretes with a compressive strength of C20/25 can easily be produced. Similar to concretes made with recycled aggregates, these concretes exhibit 15% lower compressive strength and E-modulus but twice the porosity of control specimens containing exclusively natural sand and gravel. However, only those concretes that were made with ash with a low aluminium content as a result of lye treatment remained free of damage.
Laboratory leaching tests may be used for source term determination as a basis for risk assessment for soilgroundwater pathway (leachate forecast) on contaminated sites in Germany. Interlaboratory comparisons on the evaluation of the reproducibility of column percolation tests were conducted within the framework of an integrated R + D program using three waste reference materials.
The interlaboratory comparisons of column percolation tests showed good reproducibility of the results for inorganic and organic parameters as well as for the accompanying parameters. This is due to the stipulations concerning the time of contact between leachant and sample material as well as the sample placement in the columns. Different column dimensions used by the participants of the interlaboratory comparisons did not have any substantial influence on the column test results.