Refuse incinerator emissions

Results For the St. Louis data, the target transformation analysis results for the fine fraction without July Uth and 5th are given in table 6. The presence of a motor vehicle source, a sulfur source, a soil or flyash source, a titanium source, and a zinc source are indicated. The sulfur, titanium and zinc factors were determined from the simple initial test vectors for those elements. The concentration of sulfur was not related to any other elements and represents a secondary sulfate aerosol resulting from the conversion of primary sulfur oxide emissions. Titanium was found to be associated with sulfur, calcium, iron, and barium. Rheingrover ( jt) identified the source of titanium as a paint-pigment factory located to the south of station 112. The zinc factor, associated with the elements chlorine, potassium, iron and lead, is attributed to refuse incinerator emissions. This factor could also represent particles from zinc and/or lead smelters, though a high chlorine concentration is usually associated with particles from refuse incinerators ( ). The sulfur concentration in the refined sulfate factor is consistent with that of ammonium sulfate. The calculated lead concentration in the motor vehicle factor of ten percent and a lead to bromine ratio of about 0.28 are typical of values reported in the literature (25). The concentration of lead in... 

There are numerous misconceptions about the sources of various chemical elements in waste, particularly those that are potential acid formers when the waste is incinerated or mechanically converted and used as a refuse-derived fuel. For example, it is often mistakenly stated that the source of chlorine in waste, hence a potential source of HCl emissions, is poly(vinyl chloride). The relative contents of selected, potentially acid-forming elements in the organic portion of a sample of waste collected from various households in one U.S. East Coast city is given in Table 2 (17). In this city, a chief source of chlorine in the waste is NaCl, probably from food waste. 

Chemical Volume Reduction Incineration has been the method commonly used to reduce the volume of wastes chemically. One of the most attractive features of the incineration process is that it can be used to reduce the original volume of combustible sohd wastes by 80 to 90 percent. The technology of incineration has advanced since 1960 with many mass burn facihties now have two or more combustors with capacities of 1000 tons per day of refuse per unit. However, regiila-tions of metal and dioxin emissions have resulted in higher costs and operating complexity. 

Diverse techniques have been employed to identify the sources of elements in atmospheric dust (and surface dust) (Table V). Some involve considering trends in concentration and others use various statistical methods. The degree of sophistication and detail obtained from the analyses increases from top left to bottom right of the Table. The sources identified as contributing the elements in rural and urban atmospheric dusts are detailed in Table VI. The principal sources are crustal material, soil, coal and oil combustion emissions, incinerated refuse emissions, motor vehicle emissions, marine spray, cement and concrete weathering, mining and metal working emissions. Many elements occur in more than one source, and they are classified in the... 

Table 5-1 lists the air releases from facilities in the United States that produce, process, or use nickel and its compounds, according to the 1993 TRI (TRI93 1995). These releases, totaling 285,857 pounds (129,935 kg), constitute 37.5% of the environmental releases reported in the TRI. However, since the TRI does not include emissions from power plants and refuse and sludge incinerators, its estimate of U.S. nickel emissions is incomplete. 

Hopke, et al. (4) and Gaarenstroom, Perone, and Moyers (7) used the common factor analysis approach in their analyses of the Boston and Tucson area aerosol composition, respectively. In the Boston data, for 90 samples at a variety of sites, six common factors were identified that were interpreted as soil, sea salt, oil-fired power plants, motor vehicles, refuse incineration and an unknown manganese-selenium source. The six factors accounted for about 78 of the system variance. There was also a high unique factor for bromine that was interpreted to be fresh automobile exhaust. Large unique factors for antimony and selenium were found. These factors may possibly represent emission of volatile species whose concentrations do not oovary with other elements emitted by the same source. 

Here the lead contribution is 70 from motor vehicle emissions and 10 from refuse incinerators. In the coarse fraction, the two crustal components account for 80 of the total mass. 

Beychok MR. 1987. A data base of dioxin and furan emissions from municipal refuse incinerators. Atmos Environ 21 29-36. 

Rain clouds process a considerable volume of air over relatively large distances and thus are able to absorb gases and aerosols from a large region. Because fog is formed in the lower air masses, fog droplets are efficient collectors of pollutants close to the earth s surface. The influence of local emissions (such as NH3 in agricultural regions or HCl near refuse incinerators) is reflected in the fog composition. 

Thermodynamic characteristics of the proposed system, which generates power by utilizing the waste heat from a factory, were estimated. It has been shown that the system has exergetic efficiency of 57.5% and fuel-base efficiency of 63.6%. Potential of CO2 emission reduction was also evaluated assuming the case where the waste heat emitted from all the refuse incineration plants in Japan in 1991 were utilized in the system. It has been shown that introducing the system has the potential of reducing CO2 emission of 9.62 x 10 t/y. 

Incineration of rubber tires, paper, and municipal waste is an additional source of atmospheric selenium. Hashimoto et al. (1970) reported selenium concentrations in rubber tires to be 1.3 mg/kg. Seventy different kinds of paper have been found to contain selenium (West 1967). Combustion of municipal solid waste results in stack emissions ranging from 0.00098 to 0.00216 pounds (0.44-0.98 g) of selenium per ton of refuse (Johnson 1970). 

Dioxins are released in the environment in emissions from the incineration of mimicipal refuse and certain chemical wastes and in exhaust from automobiles powered by leaded gasohne. Dioxins are highly persistent and accumulate in the environment. They are highly toxic and exhibit endocrine-disrupting activity. Therefore, they are regulated by authorities, e.g., in the United States for the most toxic 2,3,7,8-TCDD the maximum allowed concentration in drinking water is 10 ngmL [21]. 

Selenium concentrations in air are of the order of a few ngm , the levels depending primarily on coal-burning power plants, copper-refining plants or selenium rectifier plants in the vicinity (Salmon etal. 1978, Hogberg and Alexander 1986). In 1979, approximately 420 tons of selenium were released into the atmosphere of Europe. Of these, 373 tons originated from coal and oil combustion refuse incinerators contributed another 32 tons, and 13 tons were emitted from zinc-cadmium smelters. The emissions of selenium from all sources in 28 European countries in 1979 are listed in Table 7.3 (Pacyna etal. 1984) since then, no new compilation of emission data has become available. 

EXPOSURE ROUTES released in stack emissions from incineration of municipal refuse and chemical wastes exhaust from automobiles powered by leaded gasoline emissions from wood burning in the presence of chlorine in accidental fires involving transformers containing... 

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