Exakte Bestimmung von treibhauswirksamen CO₂ Emissionen aus Müllverbrennungsanlagen mittels Fossil Carbon Meter

Abstract

For various reasons, operators of waste incineration plants must report the proportion of biogenic or fossil materials in their waste feed. With the inclusion of waste incineration plants in national emissions trading (e.g. Brennstoffemissionshandelsgesetz BEHG in Germany), there will be an obligation to determine and report the quantities of fossil CO₂ emissions. At TU Wien the so called Balance Method was developed already in 2005, which allows determining the proportion of biogenic and fossil materials in the waste input and thus also the fossil and biogenic CO₂ emissions without additional measuring effort. In the meantime, the Balance Method has been applied at more than 40 waste incineration plants in Europe and has been further developed in recent years to the so-called Fossil Carbon Meter (FCM). In the present article, the Fossil Carbon Meter is presented and the results obtained are compared with the original version of the Balance Method. The results show that the FCM leads to more accurate results than the original Balance Method. Furthermore, the FCM even offers the possibility to combine the Balance Method with the radiocarbon method. This combination allows the fossil CO₂ emissions to be determined with highest accuracy (uncertainty of annual fossil CO₂ emissions < 2.5%).