Accelerated and natural carbonation of a municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) fly ash mixture: Basic strategies for higher carbon dioxide sequestration and reliable mass quantification

Abstract

The carbonation of alkaline wastes is an interesting research field that may offer opportunities for CO2 reduction. However, the literature is mainly devoted to studying different waste sequestration capabilities, with lame attention to the reliability of the data about CO2 reduction, or to the possibilities to increase the amount of absorbed CO2.In this work, for the first time, the limitation of some methods used in literature to quantify the amount of sequestered CO2 is presented, and the advantages of using suitable XRD strategies to evaluate the crystalline calcium carbonate phases are demonstrated. In addition, a zero-waste approach, aiming to stabilize the waste by coupling the use of by-products and the possibility to obtain CO2 sequestration, was considered. In particular, for the first time, the paper investigates the differences in natural and accelerated carbonation (NC and AC) mechanisms, occurring when municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) fly ash is stabilized by using the bottom ash with the same origin, and other by-products. The stabilization mechanism was attributed to pozzolanic reactions with the formation of calcium silicate hydrates or calcium aluminate hydrate phases that can react with CO2 to produce calcium carbonate phases. The work shows that during the AC, crystalline calcium carbonate was quickly formed by the reaction of Ca(OH)2 and CaClOH with CO2. On the contrary, in NC, carbonation occurred due to reactions also with the amorphous Ca. The sequestration capability of this technology, involving the mixing of waste and by-products, is up to 165 gCO2/Kg MSWI FA, which is higher than the literature data.