polymer components from end-of-life household boiler waste
WRc Waste & Resources successfully classified household boiler waste as non-hazardous waste, ultimately providing the support required for the launch of a client’s national recycling programme.
polymer components from end-of-life household boiler waste
whether the waste did or did not contain hazardous chemicals above threshold concentrations
classification of end-of-life boiler waste to support client’s national recycling programme
PERMISSION TO USE LOGO REQUIRED
City Plumbing, part of the Highbourne Group, is an award-winning plumbing and heating merchandise company, supplying to the trade since 1981 through their online store and via 350+ retail branches located throughout Great Britain.
At the point of collection from a household, boilers are classified as waste, requiring transportation to a treatment site and dismantling to recover components for recycling. City Plumbing have developed a national scheme to collect domestic end-of-life boilers and recover metal components from them for recycling. However, a potential obstacle to the launch of this scheme, which required our Waste & Resources team’s professional support, was that at the point a material becomes a waste, in this case when the boiler would be removed from a household, it must be correctly classified according to Environment Agency guidance. For transportation purposes City Plumbing needed to establish that the boilers were non-hazardous for transportation to the processing site.
Boilers are made of and contain a mixture of metals and polymer components. Because they have long lifespans, they may have been manufactured at a time when the polymer parts could have been produced using chemicals that are now classified as hazardous substances, such as flame retardants or plasticisers.
WRc Waste & Resources worked closely with City Plumbing to complete an analysis of plastic taken from a wide range of boiler types and ages to identify which potentially hazardous substances were present.
A hand-held X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer was used to screen each plastic component in every boiler. Using the weight of each component with the XRF concentration data, the concentration of any hazardous substance could be calculated for the whole boiler. This is the level at which waste classification would apply. Confirmatory quantitative testing was undertaken on a cross-section of samples to determine concentrations of flame retardants, plasticisers and other chemicals that may have been added to the plastic.
The analysis showed that the majority of the sampled boilers contained plastic that did not contain hazardous substances. A small number contained brominated flame retardants that are relevant to a hazardous property assessment, specifically HP14-ecotoxic. However, the total concentration of these chemicals in a complete boiler, including the metal and the plastic, was found to be below the concentration limit for ecotoxic substances. The data generated from the testing programme was discussed with the Environment Agency who concluded that the waste boilers could be classified as a non-hazardous waste.
The testing programme provided evidence on which hazardous substances were present in boiler plastic as well as those that were not. Based on the findings and the agreed waste classification, City Plumbing were able to begin trials of the boiler recycling programme in early 2024, with a view to expanding to additional locations.
XXX
City Plumbing