Co-disposal and reutilization of municipal solid waste and its hazardous incineration fly ash

Compared to landfill, MSW incineration (MSWI) not only eliminates its innate secondary pollution and land occupation, but also yields a net emission reduction. Regretfully, MSWI produces hazardous incineration fly ash (IFA) enriched with potentially toxic elements and dioxins. Given these, a harmless integrated scenario of co-disposal and resource reutilization of MSW and its hazardous IFA is proposed and subjected to technical and economic analysis. It introduces an IFA melting furnace, as an onsite modular integration, which serves as a bridge between the MSW incinerator and the commercial rock wool production line. The incinerator burns MSW for heating and electricity supply. The melting furnace further burns out the highly toxic dioxins adsorbed on IFA, as well as solidifying the potentially toxic elements into the molten slag, which substitutes for basalt as raw materials used for high value-added rock wool production. That achieves collaborative reduction, stabilization, harmlessness and resource reutilization of MSW as an energy source, and its IFA as energy-saving materials, as well as a net carbon emission reduction and high economicbenefits. Even more exciting, as opposed to the serious losses of the other existing scenarios, it is profitable even without the feed-in tariff and fiscal subsidy, both that are the dominating income source of other scenarios including conventional MSWI & IFA landfill and demonstration MSWI with IFA melting & landfill. Discounted Cash Flow technique shows that the profit is ∼ 9.2 RMB per ton of MSW, and it increases with insulation price, feed-in tariff, and fiscal subsidy. With the feed-in tariff and fiscal subsidy, the existing two scenarios and the proposed harmless integrated scenario can produce revenue of 103.8, 98.1-110.5, and 145.0 RMB per ton of MSW, respectively. Nonetheless, several challenges are posed for future industrial applications, such as liquid slag discharge, unstable combustion and possible environmental issues.