Concentration of dioxin congeners in different phase products from a thermal process of end of life automobile shredder dusts.

Abstract Automobile shredder residue (ASR) dusts are generated from a shredding facility that recovers steel by sorting shredded end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). One of the recycling technologies with maximum recovery rate and less volume to be disposed could be thermal processes. The proposed thermal method is a combined process with pyrolysis or gasification at substoichiometric air conditions and melting of remained product to generate slag as reusable of recycled materials. Therefore, the intermediate or final products generated during the series of processes, which are gas, oil, char, and slag, would be used as fuels or usable materials for further recycling. Before utilizing such products, they must be proven to be nonhazardous by analyzing for contamination of toxic substances such as dioxins. In this study, dioxin concentrations and distributions of congeners in products such as gas, oil, char, and slag from pyrolysis and melting process of ASR dust, and dioxin concentrations in ASR dust, were analyze...