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SELECTION OF CRITERIA FOR ASSESMENT OF NEW RECOVERY TECHNOLOGIES OF COAL COMBUSTION PRODUCTS

Monika Stępień

Abstract

Despite the existence of many technologies allowing for recovery of coal combustion products (CCPs), they still remain a product that is problematic enough, with their industrial use in the world lying in the range 40-60%. The remaining CCPs produced in the energy industry end up in landfills or are stored, thus losing their property. One of the main directions of CCPs recovery has been, for many years, the underground mining industry, where they are used, among others, as fillings in mining excavations, components of hydraulic backfill and insulation plugs. CCPs are also used in the building materials and construction industry as well as road building sector, where they are used as raw materials for the production of concretes, paving stones and cement, road foundation, as well as land reclamation and stabilization. These three main directions absorb approx. 90% of CCPs recovered in the industry, while innovative technologies, such as synthesis of zeolites, nanomaterials, sewage neutralization, production of paints and plastics, rare earth metals recovery, as well as fertilizer production, make use of the remaining 10%. What determines the possibility of using CCPs? Not only their quantitative and qualitative structure is important, but also the restrictiveness of norms and legal regulations, and transport costs as well as costs of manufacturing commercial products based on CCPs. With this knowledge, we are able to extract from the outset a number of criteria that allow for evaluation of a given technology, mainly for its economic profitability and the width of used streams of CCPs. However, for this assessment to be as comprehensive as possible, other criteria should also be analyzed. In the light of many legal regulations, including international ones, and also on the basis of concepts such as: corporate social responsibility, sustainable development, and circular economy, the criteria for assessing the impact of a given technology on the environment and local communities must also be taken into account. Assessment of CCPs recovery technologies, as well as the selection of criteria for this assessment, should be preceded by identification of all of its stakeholders. Other criteria will be important for the CCPs manufacturer (companies from the energy sector), while others will be of significance to the technology owner itself. This article presents, in a synthetic way, the most important stakeholders of CCPs recovery technologies. The criteria identified for stakeholders were grouped and presented in form of a universal assessment card.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2018/5.1/s20.102

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