Waste Incineration and Public Health (2000) / Chapter Skim
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Waste Incineration Overview
Waste Incineration Overview
Pages 17-33
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From page 17... ...
The types of waste-incineration facilities discussed in this report include incinerators, industrial boilers, furnaces, and kilns (see Chapter 3~. There is a large variety of technology, varying from stationary facilities designed to combust millions of tons of waste per year collected from a broad geographical area, down to mobile incinerators used to remediate wastes from specific sites that are contaminated by hazardous waste.
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From page 18... ...
Municipal solid waste 209a 122b 36a Hazardous waste 276C 3c On-site Incinerators 129 Commercial Incinerators 20 Industrial Boilers and Furnaces 950d Cement Kilns 18 Light Weight Aggregate Kilns 5 Medical waste e 1.655f 0.8g a Estimate is for 1996 as presented in "Characterization of Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 1997 Update" Franklin Associates 1998. b The Integrated Waste Services Association reports that there are 103 waste-to-energy facilities operating in the United States http://www.wte.org.
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From page 19... ...
. Municipal solid waste does not include segregated medical waste, but does include some medical waste that is mixed in.
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From page 21... ...
A decrease in the total capacity of municipal-waste incinerators is thought to have occurred for several reasons: the continued availability of lower-cost disposal alternatives (such as landfilling) ; opposition from local advocacy groups, which has resulted in municipal planners' rejection of waste-incinerator construction at many locations; mandatory recycling programs and increasing confidence in reduction and reuse as options; and the loss of flow control of municipal wastes.2 Uncontrolled combustion of municipal solid waste has been practiced for many years by individual homeowners burning trash, and by managers of hotels 2 "Flow control" refers to legal provisions that allow state and local governments to designate the places where municipal solid waste is taken for processing, treatment, or disposal.
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From page 22... ...
Not only can they reduce environmental effects at lower expense than do on-site emission control devices and water-treatment facilities, but they can save manufacturers money. When a hazardous waste is generated, the generator can either manage the waste on site or move it off site for treatment, disposal, or recycling.
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From page 23... ...
EPA estimates that regulations forbidding land disposal of any hazardous waste that contains liquid will substantially increase the quantity of hazardous waste directed to incinerators, boilers, and furnaces. Although industrial growth is also likely to increase hazardous-waste generation, increasing emphasis on waste minimization and recycling is likely to exert pressure to reduce such generation.
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From page 24... ...
The sites included CERCLA-Superfund sites, RCRA sites, and spill cleanup sites, although the survey did not include underground storage tank sites that were contaminated by leaked material. The boilers used to burn hazardous waste are standard industrial boilers widely used for steam generation in the process industries.
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From page 25... ...
However, some hospitals arbitrarily treat as much as 90% of their waste as red bag, apparently due to a lack of standard practices in health-care facilities for separating wastes that are truly red-bag from other waste. A 1992 study of New York City medical waste determined that much of the waste put into red bags did not qualify as red-bag waste and that much waste placed in brown bags should have been put into red bags.
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From page 26... ...
plastics placed in medical-waste incinerators, antiquated and inefficient designs of some incinerators, and suboptimal operation and emission monitoring at many on-site facilities, the potential exists for relatively high emissions of various pollutants including dioxins and furans. WASTE MANAGEMENT The committee was not charged to evaluate integrated waste-management strategies.
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From page 27... ...
Thus, various factors help determine whether a waste-incineration facility can be sited and operated successfully, including the amount of incineration capacity relative to the amount of waste that will not be committed to reduction, reuse, recycling, and comporting; the extent to which an incinerator is designed with the most-effective technologies available and designed to reduce emissions, as much as technologically feasible; and the operation of the facility so as to properly use the advanced designs to maximize combustion and emission-control efficiency. Volume Source Reduction Volume source reduction methods are used to reduce waste generation.
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From page 28... ...
Much of the overall increase is doubtless due to the replacement of durables with single-use, disposable products. Reuse The durables component of municipal solid waste is the prime target of reuse programs.
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From page 29... ...
are entering the recyclables stream with the development of new technologies. Composting involves conversion of the organic materials in municipal solid waste to compost, a soil conditioner, through the exploitation of bacterial and fungal decomposition.
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From page 30... ...
Municipal solid-waste incinerators designed in the 1980s to burn 100% of the waste stream would be expected to see at least some decline in demand (about 30% under current conditions) as reuse, recycling, and comporting took place during the 20-30 years of their design life.
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From page 31... ...
Heavy metals are found in batteries, pigments, leather, solder, and cans; chlorine is contained in PVC plastics and some bleached paper; polystyrenes might contain chlorofluorocarbons; sulfur is in tires and gypsum wallboard; and nitrogen is 3 Metals may themselves be toxic, or may catalyze the production of toxic inorganic or organic trace compounds in flue gases, for example, toxic chlorinated compounds like the dioxins and furans. Sulfur in the input stream will produce sulfur oxides in the flue gases, and nitrogen compounds will produce nitrogen oxides.
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From page 32... ...
Measures for pollution prevention include reductions of pollutant precursors in the waste stream (for example, metals, chlorine, sulfur, and nitrogen) by means of product and packaging redesign, the reuse of products and packaging that contain precursors or catalysts for pro
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From page 33... ...
WASTE INCINERATION OVERVIEW 33 auction of trace tonics, and recycling products and packaging, especially those containing such precursors. Reduction of the quantity of toxic elements in the waste stream or reduction of elements that are transformed into, or catalyze production of, pollutants of concern upon incineration are often-overlooked components of source reduction.
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