Development of a laboratory method for estimation of hydrogen chloride emission potential of incinerator feed materials.

Abstract

A laboratory method was developed to provide an estimate of the amount of hydrogen chloride (HCl) gas formed during waste incineration. The method involves heating the waste sample to 900 degrees C in a tube furnace, removing particles from the resulting gases by filtration, collecting HCl gas in a water-filled impinger, and measuring the collected HCl as chloride using ion chromatography. The original goal of this project was to develop and evaluate a method that would allow determining, in the laboratory, the amount of HCl formed upon full-scale incineration of a given hazardous waste feed material. Although the laboratory equipment and procedures performed as designed, the data show that results are very sensitive to materials of construction of the furnace zone, availability of hydrogen, and probably other factors that are difficult to translate accurately from laboratory to full-scale equipment. In particular, the incomplete and variable conversion of inorganic chlorine compounds during incineration makes estimating HCl formation from a real waste highly unreliable. This same variable conversion of inorganic chlorides also makes using any so-called total organochlorine analysis results extremely undependable for estimating HCl emissions. This paper describes the test method developed, the evaluation experiments performed, and the basis for the conclusion that the method is not applicable to accurate prediction of hydrogen chloride emissions from hazardous waste incinerators