Incineration and Incinerators-in-Disguise

General resources against incineration:

• Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance (GAIA)
  • Waste Incineration: A Dying Technology Report
  • Incinerators: Myths vs. Facts (Feb 2012)
  • An Industry Blowing Smoke: 10 Reasons Why Gasification, Pyrolysis & Plasma Incineration are Not "Green Solutions" (June 2009)
  • Burning Public Money for Dirty Energy (November 2011)
    
  • Incinerators Trash Community Health (June 2008)

  • GAIA's Publications Page - Other Great Reports on Incineration Issues
  • GAIA's Incineration Factsheets
• Waste Not newsletter archive (chronicles 1990s U.S. grassroots movement against trash incinerators)
• Rachel's News (past issues have a lot of info on incineration)

U.S. Trash Incinerator Maps

• Hand-drawn maps by John van der Harst (2001)
  • U.S. Map (2001)
  • Eastern U.S. Map (closer up)
• Energy Justice Network Mapping Project:
  • Operating U.S. Trash Incinerators
  • Mapping Project Home
    (enter your zip code or use national or global maps or search features to find various types of incinerators)

Incinerator-related issues:

• Dioxin homepage
  • Metals as Catalysts for Dioxin Formation
  • Electrostatic Precipitators Breed Dioxins
• Continuous Emissions Monitors (CEMs)

Fluidized Bed Combustors (FBCs)

• Waste Coal Burners (which use FBCs)
• Summary of Studies on Emissions of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and Nitrous Oxide (N2O) and Carbon Monoxide (CO) from Waste Coal Fluidized Bed Combustors (FBCs)
• Waste Coal Burner Powerpoint Presentation
• Tire incineration in fluidized bed boilers

Incinerators-in-Disguise (Gasification / Plasma / Pyrolysis):

• An Industry Blowing Smoke: 10 Reasons Why Gasification, Pyrolysis & Plasma Incineration are Not "Green Solutions" (June 2009)
• Waste Conversion Technologies: Emergence of a New Option or the Same Old Story? (2007 report for New York State solid waste industry, explaining plasma and gasification processes, their pitfalls and lists of existing facilities in the world)
• Greenaction Expose of Incinerators in Disguise – Gasification, Pyrolysis and Plasma Arc (2009)
• Incinerators-in-Disguise Powerpoint Presentation (PDF)
• Gasification, Pyrolysis and Plasma Incineration (April 2006 factsheet)
• Incinerators in Disguise Case Studies of Gasification, Pyrolysis, and Plasma in Europe, Asia, and the United States (April 2006)
• Waste Gasification: Impacts on the Environment and Public Health (April 2002 report on Pyrolysis and Gasification)
• Pyrolysis and Thermal Gasification of Municipal Solid Waste

Gasification

• Evaluation of Emissions from Thermal Conversion Technologies Processing Municipal Solid Waste and Biomass [direct link] (2009 report by University of California at Riverside for the BioEnergy Producers Association; includes global list of gasification facilities at end of report)
• Coal Gasification / IGCC
  
• Poor Track Record of Trash Gasification Plants (Sept 2002 letter)
• Trash Gasification Emissions (April 2002 letter)
• ThermoSelect Reality Check (2006)
• EPA Report: Gasifier Ash Contaminates Ground Water
  One myth around the solid wastes produced by gasification is that they are a glass-like "slag" that never leaches. Of course, even conventional trash incinerators pretend that their highly toxic and leachable ash never leaches. With gasification systems, they still produce ash that can leach toxic chemicals into the groundwater where it is dumped. Unlike conventional incinerator ash (which mostly goes to landfills), gasification promoters often claim that they'll sell their "slag" as building material, soil amendment or aggregate. The ash is still full of toxic metals, halogens and radioactive elements that were present in the waste and which can't be destroyed. Data from coal gasification slag produced in a coal gasification facility in North Dakota shows serious groundwater contamination from leaching and is noted in this EPA report on groundwater "damage cases" from ash/slag disposal sites. See pages 82-83.

Plasma Arc

• "A Regulatory Overview of Plasma Technology: Report of the Plasma Technology Subgroup Interstate Technology and Regulatory Cooperation Work Group" (June 1996)

Cellulosic Ethanol, Fischer-Tropsch Coal-to-Liquids, Thermal Depolymerization and Waste-to-Fuels:

• For many of these alternative types of incinerators and conversion processes (waste-to-fuels), see some of the basic arguments forth in our alternative fuels factsheet.

Tire Incineration:

• Tire Incineration
• Tire incineration in fluidized bed boilers
• Cement kilns (burning of hazardous waste and tires)

Biomass and Landfill gas:

• Biomass Incineration
• Biomass Incineration Factsheet
• Poultry Litter Incineration
• Landfill Gas
• Landfill Gas and Biomass Powerpoint Presentation

Cement Kilns:

• Burning of hazardous waste and tires in cement kilns
• Cement Kiln Portal

Incineration Definitions

The industry tries hard to pretend that plasma, gasification and pyrolysis are not forms of incineration. However, the European Union and the United States have defined all these technologies as forms of incineration (emphasis added).

The European Union defines incinerators as follows:

‘incineration plant’ means any stationary or mobile technical unit and equipment dedicated to the thermal treatment of wastes with or without recovery of the combustion heat generated. This includes the incineration by oxidation of waste as well as other thermal treatment processes such as pyrolysis, gasification or plasma processes in so far as the substances resulting from the treatment are subsequently incinerated.

This definition covers the site and the entire incineration plant including all incineration lines, waste reception, storage, on site pretreatment facilities, waste-fuel and air-supply systems, boiler, facilities for the treatment of exhaust gases, on-site facilities for treatment or storage of residues and waste water, stack, devices and systems for controlling incineration operations, recording and monitoring incineration conditions;

‘co-incineration plant’ means any stationary or mobile plant whose main purpose is the generation of energy or production of material products and: — which uses wastes as a regular or additional fuel; or — in which waste is thermally treated for the purpose of disposal.

Source: Article 3 of Directive 2000/76/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 4 on the incineration of waste (see page 4)

For more info on the EU's Waste Incineration Directive, see the UK Environment Agency's website on waste incineration.

In the United States, the definition of "municipal waste combustor" (trash incinerator) includes gasification and pyrolysis:

In Feb 11, 1991, U.S. EPA published regulations in the Federal Register (56 FR 5488) that state:

Municipal waste combustor or MWC or MWC unit means any device that combusts, solid, liquid, or gasified MSW including, but not limited to, field-erected incinerators (with or without heat recovery), modular incinerators (starved air or excess air), boilers (i.e., steam generating units), furnaces (whether suspension-fired, grate-fired, mass-fired, or fluidized bed-fired) and gasification/combustion units. This does not include combustion units, engines, or other devices that combust landfill gases collected by landfill gas collection systems.

[MSW = Municipal Solid Waste (household and commercial trash)]

This regulation (40 CFR 60.51a) was later revised on Dec. 19, 1995 to include pyrolysis, making gasification part of a new pyrolysis definition:

Municipal waste combustor, MWC, or municipal waste combustor unit: (1) Means any setting or equipment that combusts solid, liquid, or gasified MSW including, but not limited to, field-erected incinerators (with or without heat recovery), modular incinerators (starved-air or excess-air), boilers (i.e., steam-generating units), furnaces (whether suspension-fired, grate-fired, mass-fired, air curtain incinerators, or fluidized bed-fired), and pyrolysis/combustion units. Municipal waste combustors do not include pyrolysis/combustion units located at plastics/ rubber recycling units (as specified in § 60.50a(k) of this section). Municipal waste combustors do not include internal combustion engines, gas turbines, or other combustion devices that combust landfill gases collected by landfill gas collection systems.

Pyrolysis/combustion unit means a unit that produces gases, liquids, or solids through the heating of MSW, and the gases, liquids, or solids produced are combusted and emissions vented to the atmosphere.

If there is any doubt that a "municipal waste combustor" is an incinerator, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency clearly states that they're the same thing: "A municipal waste incinerator 'combusts' solid waste and thus is functionally synonymous with municipal waste combustor." See: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/nsr/gen/rm_2.html

Regarding landfill gas burners: while not regulated as "municipal waste combustors," landfill gas burners have also been referred to as incinerators by those in the industry, the trade press, county waste facility managers, and the federal government's National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Also, U.S. EPA Hazardous Waste Regulations (40 CFR 260.10) also state that plasma arc is an incineration technology:

Incinerator means any enclosed device that:

 

(1) Uses controlled flame combustion and neither meets the criteria for classification as a boiler, sludge dryer, or carbon regeneration unit, nor is listed as an industrial furnace; or

(2) Meets the definition of infrared incinerator or plasma arc incinerator.

Infrared incinerator means any enclosed device that uses electric powered resistance heaters as a source of radiant heat followed by an afterburner using controlled flame combustion and which is not listed as an industrial furnace.

Plasma arc incinerator means any enclosed device using a high intensity electrical discharge or arc as a source of heat followed by an afterburner using controlled flame combustion and which is not listed as an industrial furnace.

Industrial furnace means any of the following enclosed devices that are integral components of manufacturing processes and that use thermal treatment to accomplish recovery of materials or energy:

 

•  
  (i) The design and use of the device primarily to accomplish recovery of material products;
  (ii) The use of the device to burn or reduce raw materials to make a material product;
  (iii) The use of the device to burn or reduce secondary materials as effective substitutes for raw materials, in processes using raw materials as principal feedstocks;
  (iv) The use of the device to burn or reduce secondary materials as ingredients in an industrial process to make a material product;
  (v) The use of the device in common industrial practice to produce a material product; and
  (vi) Other factors, as appropriate.

(1) Cement kilns
(2) Lime kilns
(3) Aggregate kilns
(4) Phosphate kilns
(5) Coke ovens
(6) Blast furnaces
(7) Smelting, melting and refining furnaces (including pyrometallurgical devices such as cupolas, reverberator furnaces, sintering machine, roasters, and foundry furnaces)
(8) Titanium dioxide chloride process oxidation reactors
(9) Methane reforming furnaces
(10) Pulping liquor recovery furnaces
(11) Combustion devices used in the recovery of sulfur values from spent sulfuric acid
(12) Halogen acid furnaces (HAFs) for the production of acid from halogenated hazardous waste generated by chemical production facilities where the furnace is located on the site of a chemical production facility, the acid product has a halogen acid content of at least 3%, the acid product is used in a manufacturing process, and, except for hazardous waste burned as fuel, hazardous waste fed to the furnace has a minimum halogen content of 20% as-generated.
(13) Such other devices as the Administrator may, after notice and comment, add to this list on the basis of one or more of the following factors: