The input base waste samples were assembled using typical
components found in household waste in Western Europe (Eurostat,
2003). The components and their average weight percentages
in the base waste are given in Table 4 and the test matrix is shown
in Table 5. Note that in Table 4 the spread between components in
each sample will make the values add up to 100% for each sample.
The combustion tests were carried out with the following settings:
combustion temperature 800–850 C, combustion time 55 ± 5 min
and air flow 11 ± 0.5 m3/h. In comparison to large scale MSW incineration
the lab-scale pot furnace is different in mainly a few aspects.
First, it has a relatively small size (10 cm diameter and
130 cm height) by which it does not allow combustion tests on true MSW particle size. This may influence the partitioning of the
bottom ashes in the larger size fractions. Second, the waste movement
that the pot furnace allowed during combustion is different
from the motion exerted by a grate-type MSW incinerator. The
only movement of the burning material in the pot furnace is effectively
due to the gradual collapse of the waste stack as it burns
slowly from the top down. Nevertheless, the pot furnace tests
could be representative for MSW incineration when comparing
the relative differences in metallic aluminum recovery rates for
the different types of packaging waste. More details of the combustion
apparatus and the input base waste samples may be found in
the literature (Hu et al., 2011).