DEVELOPMENT OF A THERMAL-STABILITY BASED RANKING OF HAZARDOUS ORGANIC-COMPOUND INCINERABILITY

It is believed that emissions from full-scale incinerators can often be related to poor microscale mixing of waste and oxygen. To develop a scientifically defensible ranking of hazardous organic waste incinerability, the temperatures for 99% decomposition for a series of organic compounds were evaluated under constant conditions of elemental waste mixture composition (C:H:Cl molar ratios of 3:3:1), fuel/oxygen equivalence ratio (Φ = 3.0), and gas-phase residence time (tr = 2.0 s). Theoretically consistent data were obtained for 66 compounds. A thermochemical reaction kinetic analysis indicated that the ranking can be applied to waste/oxygen equivalence ratios greater than 1.0 and H/Cl ratios greater than 1.0. This result suggests that deviations from the ranking may occur under thermal quenching and/or high waste chlorine failure modes. Pilot- and full-scale evaluations of the laboratory-based ranking are currently being conducted. © 1990, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.