from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
One way for recycling of waste plastics is the utilization as an alternative reducing agent within the blast furnace process. Thus, they are substituting commonly used reducing agents such as coke and heavy oil, for example. However, the utilisation of waste plastics as an alternative reducing agent also represents an additional input of heavy metals in the blast furnace process. Some heavy metals, such as Zn and Pb, are proven to negatively influence the process. Therefore, the amount and concentration of heavy metals, such as Pb, Zn, Hg and Cd, in the different input and output flows of the blast furnace process were investigated. Especially the different input flows were analysed in order to evaluate the additional input of heavy metals due to the utilisation of waste plastics. For these investigations measurement data, including concentration and mass or volume measurements, respectively, for a period of four years were evaluated. The results show that the additional input of heavy metals from waste plastics in the blast furnace is for the most elements of minor significance. The distribution of the heavy metals in the process outputs is varying for the different years. However, distribution patterns for the observed heavy metals were identifiable.
Keywords: blast furnace, heavy metals, waste plastics© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.