The Ministry of Environment’s National Environmental Research Academy (NERA) is mulling the creation of a new database on characteristics of fly ash containing metals and differences in crystalline constructs to detect the illegal dumping of slag on farmland, the agency said.
The academy’s acting director Chang Shun-chin (張順欽) yesterday said that residual heavy metals in slag could seep into the soil when buried or dumped without any precautions, adding that slag waste could contaminate underground water supplies.
He said that dumping sites near irrigation channels could severely pollute crops and affect ecology.
Photo: Chen Chia-yi, Taipei Times
Chang said that slag composition heavily depends on the manufacturing processes and the machinery.
The academy has already looked into the manufacturing processes adopted by the 30 steel-making companies in the country, he said.
Once the companies submit their slag samples for further analysis, the information would be compiled into a database by the end of next year, he said.
The academy’s Examination Technology Center director Yang Hsi-nan (楊喜男) said that while slag looked similar, the ratio of metals varies greatly.
The academy has asked all steel-processing companies to provide slag samples so that they can be further analyzed using X-ray diffraction, he said, adding that this method would generate less chemical waste than traditional methods.
The analyses would inform the academy of the different material compositions, as well as the differences in crystalline structures, he added.
The academy would then register companies, making investigations into illegal slag-dumping easier in the future, he said.
It has compiled information from 10 carbon steel manufacturing companies, four stainless steel manufacturers and two integrated steel-making plants, he added.
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