Waste test cycle in laboratory building 112
The new facilities meet the high standards set for worldwide research and laboratory work in environmental and resource technology.
“We can now conduct experiments on a much larger scale than before, because the new facilities provide more space for waste and better opportunities to break down the material to a size where we can handle and analyse it,” explains Cathrine Tamstorf, who has been involved in formulating new laboratory work guidelines.
The rough work such as receiving and handling everything from waste bins and mattresses to solar cells takes place on the ground floor, while testing and analysis of the shredded waste samples is handled in laboratories higher up in the building. For example, the chemical and microbiological analyses are made on the upper floors. Here, it is important to maintain as clean an environment as possible to ensure accurate and reliable analysis results.
With their glass walls, the laboratories allow visitors to follow the researchers’ experiments and activities. Cathrine Tamstorf adds that it also contributes to a good learning environment.
In-house instruments
On the first floor, Mikael Emil Olsson works as an research engineer and helps researchers measure their samples using advanced measuring equipment worth millions. He shows a selection of the samples that are lined up on the tables in the analysis laboratory:
“These soil samples are taken from deep in the ground of a field and are measured for pesticides. And all these blue little bottles contain water samples that must be measured for PFAS.”
Previously, if Mikael Emil Olsson was given the task of measuring the concentration of, for example, PFAS in a sample from a research project, he would send it to a commercial laboratory, where the price per measurement is very high. Today, he can measure PFAS on site using highly advanced instruments that can deliver a result in half an hour.
Developing new treatment methods
PFAS (per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances) are a large group of chemical substances that are problematic because they do not break down, are highly mobile in the environment, and can accumulate in humans and animals.
Anders Baun is a professor at DTU Sustain and will head a new PFAS centre that, in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen, the University of Southern Denmark, and Aarhus University, will gather new knowledge about the effects of PFAS. He says that the new facilities and not least the new equipment represent a significant boost that enables advanced analyses.
“With the water samples, we measure PFAS concentrations before and after wastewater treatment. This is important because the threshold values for PFAS in lakes and streams are set very low. They are so low that it can technically be very difficult to get the levels all the way down to where it is safe to discharge wastewater. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new technologies that can improve treatment methods and document their effect, so we can better manage and prevent PFAS pollution,” Anders Baun elaborates.
Stabilization of landfilled waste
A concrete example of resource recycling is experiments with waste dug up at Copenhagen’s largest waste landfill, AV Miljø. The experiment investigates whether it is possible to stabilize the waste more quickly by pushing air into the low-oxygen waste, so the carbon in the waste is converted to CO2, instead of the very powerful greenhouse gas methane, that is formed when oxygen is not present.
Charlotte Scheutz, professor at DTU Sustain and head of section waste, climate and monitoring says that the laboratory’s new large fume cupboards enable large-scale experimental setups.
“Researchers and students can work at the full height from floor to ceiling in order to optimize and design full-scale experiments. In the landfill waste experiment, the waste is packed in columns. This enables us to design a full-scale aeration trial that is conducted at the waste landfill at Avedøre Holme,” Charlotte Scheutz elaborates.
Overall, the scientific experiments carried out in laboratory building 112 can be boiled down to the fact that they increase our knowledge and understanding of how society can recycle as large a proportion as possible of the waste generated or minimize the formation of waste in the first place.
