2023-12-28 07:23:00
Nitrous oxide, usually used in cooking or medicine, is being diverted. Today, laughing gas is used for recreational purposes that are dangerous to health. If last week a royal decree conditioned its sale, it is the sorting process that poses a problem. They sometimes explode in the incinerator ovens.
Among the trash, gas cylinders may seem harmless. But on closer inspection, the pictograms are self-explanatory. Laughing gas can be harmful to health and these canisters turn into real explosives when incinerated… “We are always happy to know how to recover the largest canisters before they end up in our ovens”indicates Lieve De Witte, operational manager at Bruxelles-Propreté to the RTL info teams. “It’s one less bottle that can explode.”
10 million euros in damage
2023 is a record year for Bruxelles-Propreté. The incinerators have experienced nearly 40 shutdowns following explosions. This is twice as much as last year. Consequences: 10 million euros in damage and several days of repairs. “We have three ovens at Bruxelles-Propreté, some are sometimes under maintenance”explains Adel Lassouli, spokesperson for Bruxelles-Propreté. “We process more than 1,500 tonnes of waste per day, and if these three ovens break down simultaneously because of these nitrous oxide canisters, we have real health problems which risk arising since we would no longer be able to process a whole series of waste which is produced by Brussels residents and by traders.”
To protect workers, it was necessary to find stratagems. “Since we have had explosions with the bottles, we have seen that flames come out through the flexible joints, it is dangerous for the people who have to pass here”, shows Lieve De Witte. Systems have been installed to “protect people who still have to pass there against the flames that may come out”.
Significant collections
When they do not explode in the incinerator, they are recovered by the cleaning agents. They then end up in these bins, locked up, waiting to be recovered by an external buyer.
Small and large cylinders, weighing up to 273 kilos, are collected every day by dedicated agents. “We can fill a bin in a day or in an hour”notes Ihab Hamaiza, chemical collection agent.
Thanks to this parallel sorting, 60 tonnes of cylinders were recovered. It is therefore advisable to throw them away in container parks or chemical proxies in Brussels.
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