POWER DISSIPATION IN HEAVY METALS RECOVERY FROM INCINERATOR ASHES

Under controlled conditions waste-to-energy plants are very useful systems to dispose solid wastes in combination with energy production. For common urban wastes, hence excluding special wastes, the incineration products are fly and heavy ashes where heavy metals are concentrated due to their impossibility to be vaporized. Those metals are usually lost because up to now the common ashes disposal methods have been cement or clay inertization or simple ashes storage in safe places. In order to recover those otherwise lost valuable and useful heavy metals we present the concept of an electromagnetic device able to separate and collect the different atomic species. The proposed device is essentially composed by an atomization stage followed by a separation one. The former atomizes and ionizes ash components allowing the second stage to perform separation of the desired metals by means of an electromagnetic field. Power dissipation represents one of the major issues of such devices due to the high power required to perform species separation. In this paper the major power sources and losses are also identified.