Incineration hazards, solid waste

Tillman D.A., Rossi A.J., and Vick K.M., Incineration of Municipal and Hazardous Solid Wastes, Academic Press, Inc, San Diego, (1989). 

Hazardons waste for external treatment kg/t 7 Hazardous solid waste in kilograms per tonne of saleable product. The figme includes routine production and excludes incidental, special causes resulting in maloperation and rejected material. Excludes aqueous stream sent off site for waste water treatment or incineration. 

R. S. Magee, Plastics in Municipal Solid Waste Incineration A Eiterature Study, Hazardous Substance Management Research Center, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Mar. 1989. 

Public concerns about air quality led to the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 to amendments to that act in 1977 and 1990. The 1990 amendments contained seven separate titles covering different regula-toiy programs and include requirements to install more advanced pollution control equipment and make other changes in industrial operations to reduce emissions of air pollutants. The 1990 amendments address sulfur dioxide emissions and acid rain deposition, nitrous oxide emissions, ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide emissions, particulate emissions, tail pipe emissions, evaporative emissions, reformulated gasoline, clean-fueled vehicles and fleets, hazardous air pollutants, solid waste incineration, and accidental chemical releases. 

Studies of the incineration of liquid and solid wastes must determine the rates at which hazardous compounds are released into the vapor phase or are transformed in the condensed phase, particularly when the hazardous materials make up a small fraction of the liquid burned. We must be particularly concerned with understanding the effects of the major composition and property variations that might be encountered in waste incinerator operations—for example, fluctuations in heating value and water content, as well as phase separations. Evidence of the importance of variations in waste properties on incinerator performance has been demonstrated by the observation of major smges in emissions from rotary-kiln incinerators as a consequence of the rapid release of volatiles during the feeding of unstable materials into the incinerator. 

If an incinerator burns a listed hazardous waste, the ash is also considered a listed waste. The derived-from rule states that any solid waste generated from the treatment, storage, or disposal of a listed hazardous waste, including any sludge, spill residue, ash, emission control dust, or leachate, remains a hazardous waste unless and until it is delisted. The owner/operator must also determine whether the ash exhibits any of the characteristics of a hazardous waste. 

Stationary sources Waste incineration Steel industry Recycling plants Energy production Municipal solid waste, clinical waste, hazardous waste, sewage sludge Steel mills, sintering plants, hot-strip mills Non-ferrous metals (melting, foundry Al, Cu, Ptx, Zn, Sn) Fossil fuel power plants, wood combustion, landfill gas... 

In the mid-1980s, the city of Philadelphia was experiencing a problem common to many urban areas in the United States. The city had run out of places to dispose of some of its solid wastes. One hatch of wastes that posed a special problem consisted of ash produced at the city s Roxhorough incinerator. These wastes contained hazardous chemicals, which made them unacceptable to other "host states, such as Ohio, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, which had been receiving wastes from other urban areas on the East Coast. 

The plasma energy recycle and conversion (PERC) process is an indirectly heated ex situ thermal recycling and conversion technology. According to the vendor, it treats hazardous waste, mixed radioactive waste, medical waste, municipal solid waste, radioactive waste, environmental restoration wastes, and incinerator ash in gaseous, hquid, slurry, or solid form. The technology uses an induction-coupled plasma (ICP) torch as its heat source coupled to a reaction chamber system to destroy hazardous materials. 

Chimenos, J. M., Segarra, M., Fernandez, M. A. Espiell, F. 1999. Characterization of the bottom ash in municipal solid waste incinerator. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 64, 211-222. 

To deal with the hazardous status of ashes from CCA-treated wood, the arsenic must either be extracted or the ashes would need to be encapsulated through solidification/stabilization. Hypothetically, the recovery and reuse of arsenic from the incineration of CCA-treated wood could reduce arsenic mining and imports. However, arsenic use has declined in recent years (Chapter 5) and there is little economic incentive to incinerate solid wastes and recover any volatile arsenic (Leist, Casey and Caridi, 2000, 126, 127). 

Sun, Y., M. Takaoka, N. Takeda, T. Matsumoto, and K. Oshita. 2006. Application of microwave-assisted extraction to the analysis of PCBs and CBzs in fly ash from municipal solid waste incinerators. J. Hazard. Mater. A 137 106-112. 

Currently, CDDs are primarily released to the environment during combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) and wood, and during incineration processes (municipal and medical solid waste and hazardous waste incineration). While incineration may be the primary current source of release of CDDs into the environment, the levels of CDDs produced by incineration are extremely low. CDDs are associated with ash generated in combustion and incineration processes. 

CDDs have been measured in all environmental media including ambient air, surface water, groundwater, soil, and sediment. While the manufacture and use of chlorinated compounds, such as chlorophenols and chlorinated phenoxy herbicides, were important sources of CDDs to the environment in the past, the restricted manufacture of many of these compounds has substantially reduced their current contribution to environmental releases. It is now believed that incineration/combustion processes are the most important sources of CDDs to the environment (Zook and Rappe 1994). Important incineration/combustion sources include medical waste, municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, and sewage sludge incineration industrial coal, oil, and wood burning secondary metal smelting, cement kilns, diesel fuel combustion, and residential oil and wood burning (Clement et al. 1985 Thoma 1988 Zook and Rappe 1994). 

Incinerators that accept only liquid wastes either blend them with fuels or incinerate directly. In either case, the disposer generally pumps the contents from the container. Small containers are less desirable than the standard 200-liter drum. Incinerators that accept solid waste generally incinerate without removing the waste from the container, avoiding the hazards of opening containers. Some facilities will accept a variety of containers, including individual bottles. Others prefer to accept wastes in fiber packs, which is a combustible version of the lab pack used in landfills. 

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