How to build (or refresh) your knowledge of environmental water quality
Published on: 23 Oct 2024
Read moreIn the first 12 months of Covid-19 lockdown, the Waste Doctors' in-house laboratory services stayed open throughout, adopting split shifts and additional safe working practices in order to continue supporting their customers. Even against this backdrop, our team achieved waste assessment of electricals, industrials. plastics, energy, food, furnishings and more.
Upon completion of the report for Industry Council for Electronic Equipment Recycling (ICER) on “Assessment of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE)", the Waste Doctors aim to help industry accurately assess other polymer streams to demonstrate that they are compliant with the POPs Regulations and WEEE Directive.
Three national regulators accepted our current non-hazardous waste classification for our customers’ incinerator bottom ash (IBA). To achieve this, we provided expert routine sample assessment and data monitoring, as well as in-depth advanced characterisation work to understand the chemical speciation of trace heavy metals critical for accurate classification.
MONS testing was carried out on disposable wipes as part of the Fine to Flush scheme to provide a measure of the biodegradable content of personal care products. By working for manufacturers we helped the water industry to reduce plastics entering domestic wastewater.
We engaged with a number of energy from waste operators about ammonia testing in IBA. Ammonia is being used with urea to dose flue gas emissions and meet more stringent NOx (nitrogen oxides) emissions standards. The question was what test would generate the most useful data.
Revisions were made to our expanded toolbox of advanced tests for speciating metals in biomass ash to support hazardous property assessments, especially HP14 (ecotoxic). At the same time, we widened our network of European synchtotrons for XAS analysis to support our metal speciation research/service and worked with a consortium on behalf of CEWEP (European EfW trade association) to understand HP14 assessment across CEWEP members.
We supported one energy from waste (EfW) facility investigate the suitability of using their process residues as cement replacements. We provided consultancy around mix formulations and chemical properties, and undertook environmental leaching test assessments to develop an end use for the material.
As Covid-19 guidelines relaxed, we provided support to an anaerobic digester operator to better understand the composition of food waste being received at the facility. Following representative site sampling of incoming loads, we sorted through a time series of large samples of food waste in our labs to be sure of getting robust data.
We looked at the composition and temperature that slags are formed on EfW boilers, causing fouling. By helping our clients understand these properties, they can learn how to minimise slag formation in their process reducing process downtime.
We battled the elements to collect samples of waste soft furnishing textiles and polymers from around the country in the effort to help the Environment Agency understand the levels of POPs in sofas, chairs and other soft furnishings.
All year, through improved sampling and analysis, we have helped a new biofuel EfW operator customer to consistently report higher biogenic carbon values than they could previously.
We successfully renewed our accreditation to ISO/ IEC 17025:2017 to deliver our clients UKAS accredited testing for a range of assessments, including biodegradability testing, such as BMc or DR4.
Hundreds of samples of non-WEEE cables were collected and are now embarking on X-ray fluorescence (XRF) screening and chemical testing to investigate whether they contain POPs for the British Metals Recycling Association (BMRA).