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Show ASSESSMENT OF INCINERATOR EMISSIONS DURING OPERATIONAL TRANSIENTS INTRODUCTION Andrew R. Trenholm Midwest Research Institute Kansas City, Missouri 64110 The Resource Conservat i on and Recovery Act (RCRA) was enacted in 1976 and amended in 1984 by the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) to address problems of toxic and hazardous waste disposal. Commensurate with these statues, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regards incineration as one of the principal technologies for the safe disposal of wastes. Pursuant to RCRA the EPA promu 1 gated the standards for hazardous waste i nci nerators in January 1981 1 that requ i re a destruct i on and remova 1 effi ci ency (ORE) of 99.99 percent for each principal organic hazardous constituent (POHC) designated for each waste feed. This standard and past studies of hazardous waste incinerators have primarily examined the performance of combustion systems relative to ORE for RCRA Appendix VIII compounds in the waste feed. These earlier studies demonstrated that in general most facilities performed quite well relative to the ORE. However, subsequent rev i ew by the EPA I s Sci ence Advi sory Board (SAB) 2 raised questions about additional Appendix VIII or non-Appendix VIII constituents that were not identified in the earlier tests and might be emitted from combustion of hazardous waste. These other organic compounds present in the stack gas are commonly referred to as products of incomplete combustion (PIC). The total of all POHCs and PICs that were identified in incinerator stack gases during the earlier studies was typically less than 10 percent of the total organic emissions. 3 To address the SAB question, Midwest Research Institute (MRI) was contracted by the Hazardous Waste Engineering Research Laboratory, EPA, Cincinnati, Ohio, to measure all organic emissions from a hazardous waste incinerator to the extent possible. This paper presents results of measurements of stack emissions from this study.4 APPROACH This study addressed two primary objectives. First, a wide array of sampling and analysis (S&A) techniques were used to identify and quantify constituents in the stack gas to the extent possible. Second, the emissions were measured under two operat i ng cond it ions, steady state and wi th a trans i ent combustion upset. The steady state operation was similar to conditions during a trial burn and the transient upsets were intended to simulate conditions that may occur at times during normal operation. 1 |