The object of the recycling research was to determine the technical and economical requirements of recycling of CCA-impregnated wood. The safest and most effective way is to crush impregnated timber in a stationary crushing plant where the reclaiming of dust is managed. The combustion techniques designed to burn solid Finnish combustible matter are applicable to burn crushed impregnated timber. Because of the arsenic scrubbing the gases is of special importance. By integrating different kinds of cleaning techniques the best collection efficiency is achieved for different kinds of impurities. The regulations for its combustion can be found in the air protection act and no limits exist for heavy metal emissions. Today, we do have to comply with the EU directives, however. In the near future a new directive for the fuel gases of a combustion plant will come into effect. lt is estimated that in the year 2000 there will be about 70,000 m3 of impregnated waste timber for recycling and the amount will grow to about 130,000 m3 before 2015. The size of the combustion plant to burn this amount of impregnated timber would be about 20 MW. Calculations made showed that the recycling of impregnated timber could be economically reasonable and the recycling payment would not be too high.

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