Fate of nano titanium dioxide during combustion of engineered nanomaterial-containing waste in a municipal solid waste incineration plant

The market for products containing engineered nanomaterial (ENM) is constantly expanding. At the end of their lifecycle, a significant fraction of the products will be disposed as ENM-containing waste in thermal treatment plants. Up to now there are still uncertainties on the fate and behaviour of ENM during waste incineration. In our investigations, nano titanium dioxide (nTiO2) was selected as an example for ENM, because of its high amount in consumer products and its relevance to the ENM-containing waste stream. Two test series were conducted at the municipal solid waste incineration plant “Gemeinschaftskraftwerk Schweinfurt”. For each test series, background concentrations of titanium were measured first. Samples of bottom ash, bottom ash extractor water, fly ash (boiler ash, cyclone ash), flue gas cleaning products (spray absorber ash, fabric filter ash) and washing water from the wet scrubber were taken in order to determine the fate of nTiO2. The flue gas was sampled at three points: after boiler, after cyclone and before stack. The experiments showed that most of the used reference material was located in the solid residues (i.e. bottom ash) while a smaller part was detected in the products of the flue gas cleaning. In the purified flue gas before the stack, the concentration was negligible. The flue gas cleaning system at the Gemeinschaftskraftwerk Schweinfurt complies with the requirements of the best available techniques and the results cannot be transferred to plants with lower standards.