Solid Waste from Hard Coal Combustion in the Municipal and Housing Sector

Hard coal is one of main fuel used in heat and warm water production in the municipal and housing sector. Combustion of hard coal causes dust emission and generates solid wastes. Dust is emitted to atmosphere partially by chimney ("low emission") and rest gets to municipal waste (e.g. as dust and slag). Author has made an attempt to assess and analyse the municipal and housing sector with respect to quantities of solid waste coming from hard coal combustion. For this purpose, quantity of dust emission was first calculated. According to the empirical formulas, quantities of generated solid waste depends mainly on Ash contents (A(r)), dust carryover and efficiency of exhauster facilities. Furnaces in households have no exhauster facilities, which is why efficiency of exhauster facilities was not taken into account. Dust carryover factor assumed was at 20%. In the municipal and housing sector burned hard coal are of different contents of Ash (A(r)). In the first step, from ash balance was calculated dust emission from combustion of 1 tonne of hard coal with Ash content between 5-20%. Difference between Ash content in 1 tonne of hard coal and calculated dust emission, allow to estimate quantity of generated solid waste. For example: combustion of 1 tonne of hard coal with 5% Ash content generate 10 kg dust and 40 kg solid waste. Next, there were estimated, approximated quantities of solid waste generated by combustion of real amount of hard coal. No data available about quality of hard coal burned in the municipal and housing sector. For these reason contents of Ash was assumption at 10% level. This is average contents of Ash in coarse and midle size grades. According to this assumption, for example in 2004 burned 9,3 mio. tonne of hard coal could made 740 thousand tonne of solid waste, from which in households could generate 580 thousand tonne of solid waste. Whereas in 2010 from burned 12,8 mio. tonne of hard coal could made over 1 million tonne of solid waste, and 790 thousand tonne of solid waste in households. Currently municipal wastes are collected separately. From these reason, even such estimated quantities of solid waste, can be helpful to planning of waste management in local self-governments.