Evaluation of Continuous Performance Monitoring Techniques for Hazardous Waste Incinerators

This paper discusses monitoring the waste destruction efficiency of hazardous waste incinerators. The particular problem is to ensure that incinerators do not release, without detection, significant quantities of waste as a result of operating fluctuations or equipment degradation. To detect these conditions, continuous, automated, and real-time source monitoring is required. Detection of degraded performance by monitoring and measuring waste compounds directly is not presently possible on a continuous basis. An alternative is to use commercially available continuous monitors to measure combustion intermediates (e.g., CO or hydrocarbons) and thereby infer waste destruction efficiency. Required, however, is a correlation between the emission of intermediates and the emission of waste. In this paper, the response of a number of these continuous monitors is compared with waste destruction efficiency measurements from a laboratory scale, liquid-spray incinerator operated on fuel oil doped with model waste com...