Small grain sizes of municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) bottom ash (BA) contain elemental and chemically bonded metals in appreciable amounts, especially copper. As different copper species have in general a higher density compared to the prevalent minerals, processes for density separation seemed to be favorable for the recovery of copper. Investigations with a centrifugal classifier were therefore carried out with BA from MWSI which have been used for a few years as the covering material for a landfill. The results show an appreciable enrichment of the precious copper. The concentrates contained up to 60 mg/kg copper in the dry weight (DW) (in general about 30 – 40 mg/kg DW) with enrichment factors of around 20 and a copper recovery of up to 50 % (in general around 20 %). A test series in order to evaluate the potential benefit for sequential processing illustrate the low efficiency for a further processing of the tailings.
The industrial sector of bottom ash (BA) treatment from municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) in Germany is currently changing. In order to increase the recovery rates of metals or to achieve a higher quality of mineral aggregates derived from BA, new procedures have been either implemented to existing plants or completely new treatment plants have been built recently. Three treatment trains, which are designated as entire sequences of selected processing techniques of BA, are introduced and compared. One treatment train is mainly characterized by usage of a high speed rotation accelerator whereas another is operating completely without crushing. In the third treatment train the BA is processed wet directly after incineration. The consequences for recovered metal fractions and the constitution of remaining mineral aggregates are discussed in the context of legislative and economical frameworks. Today the recycling or disposal options of mineral residues still have a high influence on the configuration and the operation mode of the treatment trains of BA despite of the high value of recovered metals.