Use of treated municipal waste incinerator ashes as concrete aggregate after fragmentation and sorting

Annually about 5.7 million tons of waste incinerator ash accumulate in Germany through the incineration of municipal waste. The new method of electrodynamic fragmentation allows waste incinerator ashes with complex material compositions to be broken at material interfaces and then sorted into materially pure components. The aim of current ASHCON research project is to substitute natural aggregate of the grain fraction 2/8 mm in conventional formulations for ready‐mixed concrete and concrete blocks by these secondary raw materials in order to keep them within the material cycle and reduce the use of primary raw materials. Since the utilization of fragmented waste incinerator ashes in concrete must be below the limit values with regard to possible pollutant concentrations (e.g. heavy metal concentrations), the suitability of a so‐called non‐destructive neutronic analysis method on real samples is also being investigated within the ASHCON project. The first results of sample collection, preparation and analysis as well as material properties of the produced concretes with the implementation of mineral residues from waste incinerator ashes are presented in this paper.