🌿 Leaching of granular waste and sludges — one stage batch test at L/S 10 l/kg for particles below 4 mm

Environment PN-EN 12457-2

Overview

What this test is for. It is a COMPLIANCE TEST — it checks whether a waste meets the criteria for acceptance at a landfill of a given class, and does not examine the behaviour of the waste in the environment. The catalogue card of the standard says so plainly: "A compliance test is described, providing information on the leaching of granular wastes and sludges under the conditions of the experiment described, and in particular at a liquid to solid ratio of 10 l/kg of dry matter. It is applied to waste with a particle size below 4 mm without or with size reduction. This European Standard has been drawn up for testing mainly inorganic constituents of waste. The test presented cannot be used as the only one for determining the leaching behaviour of a waste".

Four parts of the series — and this is the commonest place to go wrong. The EN 12457 series has four parts differing in two things: the liquid to solid ratio and the admissible particle size of the sample. Council Decision 2003/33/EC lists them in a single table: part 1 — L/S 2 l/kg, particles below 4 mm; part 2 — L/S 10 l/kg, particles below 4 mm; part 3 — L/S 2 and 8 l/kg, particles below 4 mm; part 4 — L/S 10 l/kg, particles below 10 mm. Parts 2 and 4 therefore realise THE SAME ratio of 10 l/kg and differ solely in particle size: 4 mm against 10 mm. That is why both occur equally often in accreditation scopes, and why in reading someone else's report one must check the number of the part and not merely "L/S 10".

Why a laboratory carries out this determination. The Regulation of the Minister of Economy of 16 July 2015 on the acceptance of waste for landfill (Journal of Laws 2015 item 1277) invokes no standard — it describes the test conditions in words: "The permissible limit values for leaching are determined at a liquid to solid ratio of 10 (basic test) or 2 (auxiliary test) l/kg of the total content of constituents, the auxiliary test being carried out where the basic test cannot be performed". The legal basis is therefore the CONDITIONS and not the number of a standard; the standards of the EN 12457 series are the way in which those conditions are realised.

What the result is compared with. Decision 2003/33/EC gives limit values for leaching for inert waste, separately for L/S 2 l/kg and L/S 10 l/kg (mg/kg dry matter) and for the first eluate of a percolation test at L/S 0.1 l/kg (mg/l): arsenic 0.1 / 0.5 / 0.06; barium 7 / 20 / 4; cadmium 0.03 / 0.04 / 0.02; total chromium 0.2 / 0.5 / 0.1; copper 0.9 / 2 / 0.6; mercury 0.003 / 0.01 / 0.002; molybdenum 0.3 / 0.5 / 0.2; nickel 0.2 / 0.4 / 0.12; lead 0.2 / 0.5 / 0.15. Member States decide which of the test methods and the corresponding limit values apply in their territory — the Polish limit values are in the annex to the 2015 regulation, item 1277.

What the steps listed below in the "procedure" field are — and what they are NOT. It is not a test procedure: Decision 2003/33/EC describes the ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE for accepting waste at a landfill, and the determination itself is one step within it. Steps 1, 2 and 8 belong to the acceptance procedure, steps 3–7 to the test carried out by the laboratory, and step 9 (the report) is OUR recommendation following from the existence of four parts of the series, and the working steps of the standard itself we do not have (see below). The Decision divides the acceptance of waste into three levels: basic characterisation (full identification of the waste: source and origin, information on the process generating it, description of the treatment applied, chemical composition and leaching, appearance, waste code from the European list), compliance testing and on-site verification. The leaching test is an element of the first and second levels and not the whole procedure — a laboratory carrying out the determination alone supplies one of the many items of information required on acceptance of a waste.

What this description does not contain — and this must be read before use. We did not have the full text of the standard: PKN supplies it for a fee and the preview could not be retrieved (checked 11 September 2026). We therefore DO NOT GIVE the working steps of the standard itself: the time and manner of agitation, the way of separating the eluate from the solid phase, the requirements for vessels, the preparation of the sample for testing, or the conditions for storing the eluate. We checked expressly that they are not in Decision 2003/33/EC either — the words „wytrząsanie" (agitation), „filtracja" (filtration) and "24 h" do not occur in the Polish wording even once — the check concerns the POLISH wording of the Decision, which is why these three words are quoted in Polish here rather than translated. The steps given below in the "procedure" field come from the LEGISLATION, not from the standard, and each of them names its source. A laboratory implementing the method must buy the standard.

A note on the English title: the PKN catalogue card gives the Polish title only, and we have not confirmed the English version of the title in any document retrieved — the Polish version of Decision 2003/33/EC calls this series „Odciek – Próba zgodności na odciek granulowanych materiałów odpadowych i szlamów" — and that wording raises the same doubts as the three mistakes pointed out below: English "leaching" is wymywanie, not odciek, and "granular" is ziarnisty, not granulowany. WE DO NOT CLAIM these are two further errors of that translation — we have not compared these two words against the language versions of the Decision the way we compared the other three; we note it as something to be checked, while in the English version of the same act, which we retrieved, the tables are replaced by the marker ">TABLE>" — the content of the tables was not rendered in that edition, although the structure of the sections is the same. The title in the English field is therefore our reconstruction from the Polish title and not a title transcribed from a source.

A note on the edition: PN-EN 12457-2:2006 implements EN 12457-2:2002 [IDT] — a European document four years older than the national edition — and supersedes PN-EN 12457-2:2003, the English version.

Errors in the Polish translation of this Decision — to be checked by anyone who goes to the address given. A comparison of the two official versions from the same address shows three terminological mistakes in section 3: the English group heading "Digestion of raw waste" was rendered in Polish as "Fermentacja odpadów surowych", whereas EN 13657 and EN 13656 listed under it describe DIGESTION (in the second case microwave digestion), not fermentation; "fraction" was rendered as "porcję" (portion); "particle size" as "wielkość cząsteczki" (molecule size) instead of "wielkość cząstki" (particle size). The last mistake is the most dangerous here, because a particle and a molecule are different things and the whole method is defined by a particle size below 4 mm. The quotations in this entry come from the Polish version and we give them faithfully; the names of the operations, however, we describe as they truly are.

Method principle

A weighed sample of waste with a particle size below 4 mm (without reduction or after crushing) is flooded with water in an amount corresponding to a liquid to solid ratio of 10 litres per kilogram of dry matter, a one stage batch contact is carried out, the phases are then separated and the concentrations of the constituents — above all the inorganic ones — are determined in the eluate obtained. The result is converted into the mass of the constituent released from a kilogram of dry matter of the waste (mg/kg d.m.) and compared with the limit values for leaching proper to the class of landfill under consideration. The final measurement itself is carried out by the methods proper to the individual constituents (atomic spectrometry, ICP, ion chromatography) — EN 12457-2 describes the preparation of the eluate, not the determination of constituents in it.

Applications

• Qualifying waste for deposit at landfills for inert waste, for non-hazardous waste or for hazardous waste
• Basic characterisation of a waste before its first acceptance at a landfill
• Compliance testing of waste accepted regularly from the same process
• Testing slags, ashes, rubble and sludges for the release of metals
• Assessing the effectiveness of stabilisation and solidification of waste — comparing leaching before and after treatment

Key parameters

Standard

Standard number

PN-EN 12457-2:2006 (EN 12457-2:2002 [IDT])

Title (PL)

Charakteryzowanie odpadów -- Wymywanie -- Badanie zgodności w odniesieniu do wymywania ziarnistych materiałów odpadowych i osadów -- Część 2: Jednostopniowe badanie porcjowe przy stosunku cieczy do fazy stałej 10 l/kg w przypadku materiałów o wielkości cząstek poniżej 4 mm (bez redukcji lub z redukcją wielkości)

Title (EN)

Characterization of waste — Leaching — Compliance test for leaching of granular waste materials and sludges — Part 2: One stage batch test at a liquid to solid ratio of 10 l/kg for materials with particle size below 4 mm (tytuł angielski odtworzony z polskiego — patrz uwaga w opisie)

Step-by-step procedure

1. PROCEDURE FOR ACCEPTING WASTE AT A LANDFILL (Decision 2003/33/EC), not a test procedure — level 1: basic characterisation of the waste (Annex, points 1.1–1.2)

   Gather the information required before the first acceptance of the waste: source and origin, information on the process generating it together with a description of the raw materials and products, a description of the treatment applied to the waste or a justification for its absence, data on the chemical composition, appearance (odour, colour, physical form) and the waste code from the European list. THE STEP COMES FROM THE LEGISLATION, not from the standard.

2. ACCEPTANCE PROCEDURE — deciding which part of the series to apply (Decision 2003/33/EC, section 3)

   Check the particle size of the waste and the required liquid to solid ratio. Below 4 mm at L/S 10 l/kg — part 2 (this method); below 10 mm at L/S 10 l/kg — part 4; L/S 2 l/kg — part 1; L/S 2 and 8 l/kg — part 3. THE STEP COMES FROM THE LEGISLATION.

3. THE TEST ITSELF — here begins what the laboratory does: preparation of the sample (EN 12457-2)

   Bring the waste to a particle size below 4 mm — without reduction if the waste already meets it, or by crushing. Determine the dry matter, since the volume of liquid is calculated from it. WE DO NOT GIVE THE DETAILS OF THE PROCEDURE (the manner of crushing, the drying conditions, the size of the test portion) — they are in the standard, whose text we did not have.

4. Batch contact at L/S 10 l/kg (EN 12457-2)

   Flood the weighed sample with water in an amount of 10 litres per kilogram of dry matter and carry out a one stage batch contact. WE GIVE NEITHER THE TIME, NOR THE MANNER, NOR THE SPEED OF AGITATION — they are set by the standard. We checked that they are not in Decision 2003/33/EC either.

5. Separation of the eluate from the solid phase (EN 12457-2)

   Separate the liquid from the solid phase and secure the eluate for the determinations. WE GIVE NEITHER THE METHOD OF SEPARATION NOR THE PORE SIZE OF THE FILTER — they are set by the standard.

6. Determination of the constituents in the eluate

   Determine the concentrations of the constituents by the methods proper to each of them (ICP-OES, ICP-MS, AAS, ion chromatography). EN 12457-2 prepares the eluate; the determination of constituents in it is described by separate standards, named in Decision 2003/33/EC and in the regulation.

7. Conversion to release from a kilogram of dry matter

   Convert the concentrations in the eluate into the mass of the constituent released from a kilogram of dry matter of the waste (mg/kg d.m.), in accordance with the liquid to solid ratio used in the test.

8. ACCEPTANCE PROCEDURE — comparison of the test result with the limit values for leaching (Journal of Laws 2015 item 1277; Decision 2003/33/EC)

   Compare the result with the limit values proper to the class of landfill under consideration. For inert waste at L/S 10 l/kg the Decision gives, among others: As 0.5; Ba 20; Cd 0.04; total Cr 0.5; Cu 2; Hg 0.01; Mo 0.5; Ni 0.4; Pb 0.5 mg/kg d.m. THE STEP COMES FROM THE LEGISLATION.

9. Report

   In the report give the number of the PART of the EN 12457 series, the liquid to solid ratio applied, the particle size of the sample and whether the waste was crushed. Without the number of the part, the entry "L/S 10" alone does not settle whether the test was carried out to part 2 (below 4 mm) or part 4 (below 10 mm).

Required equipment and apparatus

Reagents, media and consumables

Health and safety (OHS)

• Waste of unknown composition is treated as potentially hazardous material — gloves, goggles, work under a fume hood with dusty waste or waste with a perceptible odour.
• Crushing waste releases dust — provide local extraction and respiratory protection.
• The eluate may contain heavy metals at concentrations requiring it to be treated as hazardous waste — do not pour it into the sewer without assessment.
• Acidify the eluate with nitric(V) acid under a fume hood; the acid is corrosive.
• With waste of unknown pH, expect gas evolution after flooding with water — open the vessels with care.

Frequently asked questions