title: Flue gas recirculation and enhanced performance of waste incinerators under waste uncertainty.
abstract: Variations in waste quantities and composition affect incinerator operating conditions and performance. Fluegas volumes consititute a dominant environmental and financial consideration for efficient waste incinerator (WI) operation, since they affect the temperature, throughput, air pollution control system (APCS) residence time, and pollutant emissions, when the charging rate or composition of any waste is varying. Fluegas recirculation (FGR) in WI is an effective technique for reducing WI atmospheric pollution, mainly NOx emissions, albeit affecting WI throughput, temperature and destruction/removal efficiency. FGR refers to mass recirculation of a possibly cooled fraction of fluegases and differs substantially from fluegas heat recovery. The present work shows that, besides emission control, suitable manipulation of FGR enhances WI performance under waste uncertainty, enabling higher throughput, at the desired temperature and within the allowed APCS residence time range. A dimensionless parameter related to the uncertain wastes' net enthalpy contribution is isolated, which encompasses heat of reaction and enthalpy outflows from fluegas and solids and which reveals whether throughput is decreasing or increasing with temperature and FGR ratio. Normalized throughput and total fluegas volume isotherms manifest the interdependence and enable manipulation for enhanced environmental and economic performance.
authors.affiliation: ANION Environmental Ltd. , 26 Lykoudi Street, Athens Greece.
authors.forename: Christos Aristeides
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Tsiliyannis
mesh_terms: D005740:Gases / Q000737:chemistry*; D017745:Incineration; D012037:Refuse Disposal / Q000379:methods*; D035501:Uncertainty
chemical_list: D005740:Gases