Elemental balance of SRF production process: Solid recovered fuel produced from commercial and industrial waste

• Concentration of inorganic elements in waste components is examined.
• Concentration of inorganic elements in streams of SRF production process is examined.
• Sources of pollutant and potentially toxic elements in input waste are identified.
• Elemental balance of commercial scale SRF production process is established.
• Parameters affected the quality of SRF and yield of SRF process are highlighted.

In order to study the mass flow of pollutant and potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in the output streams of solid recovered fuel (SRF) production process, the various streams produced in commercial scale SRF production process are characterized chemically and, the elemental balance of SRF production process is presented. The SRF is produced from commercial and industrial waste (C&IW) through mechanical treatment (MT). The elements investigated for their mass balance in SRF production process are chlorine (Cl), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb) and mercury (Hg). The results showed that of the total input chlorine 60% was found in the SRF stream and 35% in the reject material stream and rest of 5% was in fine fraction and heavy fraction streams. Of the total input arsenic content 42% was found in the reject material and 32% in the SRF stream and rest (i.e. 26%) was found in the fine fraction stream. In case of cadmium, lead and mercury of their total input content to the process 46%, 58% and 45% respectively was found in the SRF stream. Among the waste components of C&IW, rubber and plastic (hard) were measured to contain the highest content of chlorine i.e. 8.0 wt.% (dry basis) and 3.0 wt.% (dry basis) respectively. Rubber was also found to contain higher content of cadmium as compared to other waste components. Plastic (hard) was measured to contain higher content of lead (i.e. 400 mg/kg, dry basis) than other components of input waste stream. The distribution of waste components (mainly plastic (hard), rubber and to some extent textile) was found significantly more important than other components of input waste stream in defining the concentration of pollutant and potentially toxic elements in output streams of SRF production process.