The research project “Landmonitoring” was aimed at assessing the environmental impact of the new waste -to-energy plant in Bozen/Bolzano. The Province of South Tyrol and Ecocenter, the plant’s operator, commissioned the Department of Environmental Physics of the University of Trento, the pharmacological research institute Mario Negri from Milan and the Eco-research laboratory from Bozen-Bolzano to carry out the study. Subsequently, the renowned National Center for Atmospheric Research of Colorado (USA) and Cisam, a company specialising in environmental measurements, also became involved.
The data basis: In a strive to complement air-quality-data collected by the environmental agency of the Province experts installed a “sodar”, a sonic detection and ranging device for vertical wind profiling, on the roof of the waste-to-energy plant and a “lidar”, a device for surveying wind direction and intensity up to a height of 3 km, on the roof of building 12 of the Province in Bozen/Bolzano. After having developed a mathematical weather model for the orography of the Bozen/Bolzano basin, the ideal conditions for carrying out the measurements materialized on 14th February 2017. 14 research teams were positioned at the sites with maximum fallout, each equipped with 40 special containers for air sampling. The air contained in the bottles was then analyzed with a highly sensitive mass spectrometer.
The result: The waste-to-energy plant accounted only for 0.08% of the overall particulate matter and 0.9% of the overall nitrogen dioxide measured in all sites. Ecocenter’s president Stefano Fattor emphasized that "in the rest of the territory, the concentrations of all pollutants attributable to the waste-to-energy plant are neither measurable nor quantifiable".
ATZWANGER is proud of the leading role it had in the design, turn-key construction and commissioning of this high-tech waste incineration plant.
For further information:
https://www.eco-center.it/de/aktivitaeten-dienstleistungen/umwelt/anlagen/restmuellverwertungsanlage-897.html
www.eco-center.it/it/attivita-servizi/ambiente/impianti/impianto-di-termovalorizzazione-897.html
